IN THE POULTRY YARD. 130 
exceptionally good year for selling cabbages, and the price was very 
high, everybody planted a patch this year, and several of my neigh- 
bors planted quite extensively. The result was that the market was 
overstocked, and I bought my neighbor’s cabbages and had him 
deliver them fov less than I had offered him in the spring, $35 per 
1,000. When he drew the last load and got his pay for them, he 
remarked that he was done with cabbage growing; would never 
grow another one except for his own use. I then asked him what 
he would grow me the same quantity for next year, I to take them 
away as wanted? He said he would think the matter over and let 
me know. In a few days he came to me and offered to grow 3,000 
heads for the same price that I had offered him the year before— 
$42 per 1,000. I closed with him on the understanding that all 
the heads were to be good saleable heads, any poor ones to count 
at the rate of two for one. This gave mea head of cabbage for 
every bird I raised that year, and I found it none too much. But 
this is anticipating. 
Meantime I had determined that if I could not grow cabbages 
I would grow something else, and I fixed upon clover. Experience 
had shown me that this plant formed one of the very best foods for 
fowls, and as it could be made to produce a very heavy crop per 
acre I believed it to be one of the most profitable. Thirty-five 
bushels of corn, which, at 58 Ibs. to the bushel, would give 2,000 
Ibs., may be considered a fair yield for an acre. I have raised four 
times this amount of dry clover from an acre, and the percentage 
of egg forming elements in the clover is greater than that of those 
in the corn. 
I therefore resolved to raise clover as an egg producing food and 
as green food. ‘There were some other plants that suggested 
themselves, but as clover and I were old friends, and as I saw 
several vigorous plants growing on the place, I felt sure that I 
could grow clover, and I did-not care to try any “side” ex- 
periments at this stage of my venture. I had neither the time, the 
money, nor the inclination. 
The reader may, perhaps, have noticed that in speaking of my 
manure pile, I said nothing of the hen manure—by far the most 
