THE DOLLAR HEN FARM 
team is not owned, it would be better to have the hoppers 
larger so that feed purchased, say, once a month, could be 
delivered directly into the hoppers. 
Water Systems. 
The best water system is a spring-fed brook. 
The man proposing to establish ap individual poultry plant, 
and who after reading this book gods and buys a tract of land 
where an artificial water system is necessary, would catch 
Mississippi drift-wood on shares. But there are plenty of such 
people in the world. A man once stood all day on London 
Bridge hawking gold soverigns at a shilling a-piece and did 
not make a sale. 
Next to natural streams are the made streams. This is the 
logical watering method of the community of poultry farmers. 
These artificial streams are to be made by conducting the 
water of natural.streams back of the land to be watered, as in 
irrigation. It is the problem of irrigation over again. Indeed, 
where trucking is combined with poultry-growing, fowl water 
ing should be combined with irrigation. 
It may be necessary to dam the stream to get head, suffi- 
cient supply or both. In sandy soils, ditches leak, and board 
flumes must be substituted. The larger ones are made of the 
boards at right angles and tapered so that one end of one 
trough rests in the upper end of the next lower section. The 
smaller, or lateral troughs may be made V-shaped. 
The cost of the smaller sized flume is three cents a foot. 
Tron pipe costs twelve cents a foot. 
The greater the slope of the ground the smaller may be the 
troughs, but on ground where the slopes are great, more ex- 
pense will be necessary in stilting the flumes to maintain the 
level, and the harder it will be to find a large section that can 
be brought under the ditch. 
Fluming water for poultry is, like irrigation, a community 
project. The greatest dominating people of history have their 
origin in arid countries. It was co-operate or starve, and they 
learned co-operation and conquered the earth. If a man in- 
terferes with the flume, or takes more than his share of the 
water, put him out. We are in the hen, not the hog business. 
Community water systems, where water must be pumped 
and piped in iron pipe, is of course a more expensive under- 
taking. It will only pay where water is too deep for indi- 
viduals to drive sand points on their own property. There is 
certainly little reason to consider an expensive method when 
there are abundant localities where simple plans may be used. 
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