DR4 RESOURCES CF CALIFORNIA. 
Ench nest has some hay in it and a mock egg of porcelain. 
Several times in the course of a day, the eggs are taken out 
and placed in a covered box near at hand. Four or five hens 
may use the same nest in the course of a day, and if the eggs 
were left in the nest the warmth might start the development 
of the chick, and injure the egg for either hatching or eating. 
It is considered bad policy to let a hen sit on eggs while lay- 
ing, even if she is to hatch them herself, for some will be far- 
ther advanced in incubation than others, and then the propor- 
tion of loss will be great. Over the laying department is the 
roosting place, which is eighteen feet high, and has the perches 
so fixed that the droppings of one hen do not fall on another 
A stairway leads up from the ground to the roosting chamber 
In the lower story of another house is the hatching depart- 
ment, with nests for six hundred hens. The nests are about a 
foot square, with a door in front, opening on a level with the 
floor. They are numbered and divided into sections, each of 
which has one door, and has hens which commenced sitting at 
the same date. The hens are fed by sections; ten, twenty or 
thirty being let out at a time, and called to eat. When first 
called they do not understand it, and after they have eaten, 
they have difficulty in finding their places; but in three or four 
days they come out immediately as soon as the door is opened, 
and when the signal for closing is given, they go to their places 
without the least confusion. About a dozen eggs, usually not 
more than four, and never more than ten days old, are given to 
each sitting hen, and of this dozen, nine or ten are hatched on 
an average. Every nest has snuff in the bottom of it to keep out 
the lice. When the hen has hatched out her brood, she and 
they are transferred to the “young-chick room,” over the 
hatching room, where every hen is put ina pen. During the 
first twenty-four hours the little chicks get nothing to eat ; 
then they are fed twice on fine bread, after that on boiled rice 
and corn-meal. They are fed four times a day. When five 
days old, the chicks, with their mother, are placed in the 
smaller enclosure of the poultry-yard, which has several 
