112 COMMON SENSE 
there for two or three weeks. At the end of that time they were 
to have the freedom of the entire place. 
For the first lot, then, I carefully examined my flock and selected 
75 birds, all as nearly alike as possible, and as near like Dominiques 
as I could get them. We now tried to transfer them to their own 
coop, but in so doing some serious accidents occurred—one fowl 
had a leg broken, and another had a wing dislocated before we 
had captured a dozen. I acted as looker on, while younger and 
more active legs and hands did the work of catching. The young 
men that- I employed were not rough or thoughtless in regard to 
the pain inflicted . upon animals, but I could see that to handle 
four or five hundred birds, catching them by hand, was a task that 
no one could perform without great risk of accident to the fowls. 
I therefore ordered the wounded birds killed and stopped all 
further proceedings. ‘The men were set at work on the next 
house, while I went to town to procure a good net. In my 
younger days I had had considerable experience catching fish with 
a landing net, and I felt that with a good instrument of that kind I 
could catch any fowl in my flock, without ruffling a feather or hurt- 
ing a limb. So before I went I told the carpenter to get me out a 
pole of the lightest but straightest grained pine he could find, 7 feet 
long, 124 inches in diameter at the butt and 1% inches at the top. 
When I returned I brought a bag net, 30 inches in diameter at 
the mouth, but very considerably less at the bottom, and 40 inches 
deep. I also had a tough, dry hoop pole which was passed 
through the upper meshes of the net and then tied firmly to the 
pine pole. It was, in fact, a huge landing net with 14 inch 
meshes, and I proceeded to try it. Selecting a bird, I walked 
gently up to it, and by a sudden movement, I placed the net over it 
and had it. If I had used a dag, the bird would have dodged 
under the hoop but as the net seemed to offer no obstruction, the 
bird ran right into it, and was caught. It was no trouble at all, 
and thereafter I needed no help in catching the fowls. But I 
found that after they were caught it.took too much time to carry 
each bird singly to its new yard. I therefore had a transier coop 
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