CHAPTER XI 

 Summer Care 



For the summer care of these flocks, beginning about 

 April I, or as soon as the groun:l can be worked, take 

 a strip of land along the ends of your house, which end 

 is most convenient, and plow a good strip. If you have 

 ten or twenty houses in a row, plow the length of them 

 all, if you can. Now sow this strip liberally with oats, 

 and if you can harrow this every morning so much the 

 better, and sow lightly of oats, three times a week, un- 

 til the coming November. Do this all summer long, 

 using a spring tooth harrow, and your hens will work in 

 this fresh ground for this grain continually. As this 

 grain keeps sprouting and coming up all the time you 

 will have springtime for these hens from spring until 

 Kovember. If you follow this up the result in eggs will 

 surprise anyone The hen keeps right on laying all 

 through the summer and fall, and not even stops when 

 she is molting. So I claim under these conditions a 

 two hundred to two hundred and fifty egg hen will be 

 a common thing and flocks treated this way should 

 average two hundred or more eggs each, for you see the 

 hens feast on an abundance of worms and insects as 

 well, and they will not consume more than half the 

 quantity of beef scraps when treated this way. 



In changing from winter to summer care, if your 

 plant is laid out on streams of water, as I have advised, 

 you will have no watering to do, and just as soon as 

 you get to plowing your ground you will gradually 

 stop your green bone and processed oats, as your hens 

 will get all these oats they can handle, now started in 

 their natural way in the ground. The worms and in- 

 sects they now get will take the place of green cut 

 bone, so all the work you have to do during the sum- 



31 



