The Essentials of Poultry Raising 117 



in fields where the grain has been removed. The birds devour 

 the insect life, manure the ground, and protect the next year's 

 crop by destroying insect Hfe, which would have otherwise 

 hibernated to do damage the following year. One hundred hens 

 will void one and one-half tons of droppings a year. Each ton 

 of poultry fertilizer is worth, at the present price, $25.00. 



338. Poultry in Connection With Dairying. Poultry and dairy- 

 ing go hand in hand. In a dairy there is usually much waste 

 skim milk, and, at times, buttermilk. Milk makes quick growth 

 in chicks. Recently the North Carolina Experiment Station 

 demonstrated that chicks fed ground feed, mixed with milk, 

 made 30 per cent greater growths than other flocks fed the 

 same ground feed without milk. The Indiana Experiment 

 Station recently showed that hens fed ground feed and grain 

 and no milk or animal food laid an average of 59.35 eggs per 

 hen per year, while other flocks fed the same ground feed and 

 grain and milk averaged 183.5 eggs per hen per year. 



339. Utilization of Waste. The waste of foods from the table 

 and kitchen is often sufficient to keep a dozen hens. On the 

 average hundred-acre farm there is enough waste in yards and 

 around the barn and nearby fields to more than supply one-half 

 the food for fifty hens. 



340. Little Capital Required on the Farm. On the farm 

 poultry raising can be begun with little capital. An old build- 

 ing may be remodeled at a small cost, or much of the framing 

 material can be secured from the farm woodyard, and oftentimes 

 logs may be hauled to nearby sawmills and sawed into boards 

 for the construction of poultry houses. The flock can be orig- 

 inated in the fall by buying some good birds, or baby chicks 

 may be purchased in the spring and a flock of pullets be raised 

 during the summer months. If the farm has a flock of mongrels, 

 eggs from pure-bred flocks may be purchased during March and 

 April and a flock of pullets raised for the next year's breeding 

 and &gg production. In this case the cockerels, being pure bred, 



