POULTRY EXPERIMENTS. 165 



YARDS AND GREEN FOOD. 



The yards conform in width to the 20 foot sections of the house 

 and are 100 feet deep. The fence is 5 feet high and is made 

 from 2 strips of 2 inch mesh No. 19 poultry netting. By using 

 2 strips of 30 inch width, instead of one strip double that width, 

 2 strong lines of wire are brought in the middle and the liability 

 of bagging is much lessened, while the cost is not increased. 



To give free passage for teams near the door of the build- 

 ing, openings 12 feet wide are left in the yard fences. They are 

 15 feet away from the front of the building, so that the road may 

 not be obstructed with snow which is liable to accumulate near 

 the building. The frame fence sections, which fill in the open- 

 ings during the summer, are quickly taken out and replaced on 

 cleaning days, and the delivery of bedding and worn litter, back 

 and forth, from wagon to buildings is very directly made. 



When these yards were constructed it was the intention to ar- 

 range others corresponding to them in size and shape, in the 

 rear of the building, but experience with the wide house, and ob- 

 servation of the yards as a source of green food has been such as 

 to cause the abandonment of the plan of double yards. It was 

 thought that 2 yards, to be used in alternation by the birds, fre- 

 quently cultivated and reseeded, would furnish sufficient green 

 food in summer, but 100 birds in yards of this size soon wear out 

 and foul the young plants to such an extent that they eat very 

 sparingly of the green stuff until the storms or showers wash the 

 plants clean again. 



Being satisfied that the birds were not getting green food 

 enough in the yards last spring, young alfalfa as soon as it was 

 tall enough so it could be mown with a scythe, was cut and then 

 run through a feed-cutter. A peck measure was pressed full of 

 this and fed to 100 hens in the A. M. and another peck of it was 

 given to them in the P. M. They ate practically all of it, until 

 the plants commenced to get woody. When clover was large 

 enough to mow that was fed to them in the same way. They ev- 

 idently relished the clover better than the alfalfa, but the alfalfa 

 has the advantage of being ready to use before the clover has 

 made growth enough to cut. 



Feeding the clover was continued until the greenest spots were 

 nearly all out of bloom. At that time young clover from a field 



