24 BRIGGS' SYSTEIM OF 



CHAPTER IX. 



Summer Care. 



For the summer care of these flocks, beginning 

 about April first, or as soon as the ground 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, until the coming Novem- 

 ber. Do this all summer long, using a spring tooth 

 harrow, and your hens will work in this fresh ground 

 for this grain continuall)'. As this grain keeps sprout- 

 ing and coming up all the time, }0u will have spring- 

 time for these hens from spring until November. If 

 3'ou follow this up, the result in eggs will surprise any- 

 one. The hen keeps right on laying all through the 

 summer and fall, and not even stop when she is moult- 

 ing. 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 }ou 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 wav. 



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, also your mash 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 insects they now get will take the 

 place of green cut bone, so all the work }-ou have to 

 do during the summer is to cultivate this ground and 

 keep sowing oats and at night hitch up your horse 

 and give each flock of fowls about two quarts of 



