IN THE POULTRY YARD. 137 
recent writers, and often claimed as original by them, is to mix the 
grain with cut straw, leaves, or other light rubbish, and make the 
hens “scratch for their living.” It is a most excellent plan, but 
requires special arrangements to make it succeed in practice. All 
such scratching grounds must be protected from rain, snow, etc., 
and must be separate from the dusting baths. My feeding grounds 
were simply sheds, cheaply constructed of stout poles and thatched 
with evergreen boughs, obtained in thinning the belt of evergreens 
which protected our northern boundary. If properly laid, such a 
roof is almost perfectly rain-proof, and the birds can always find 
plenty of room. In summer, therefore, we relied upon these feed- 
ing places, of which there was one to every 100 hens. In locating 
them we chose the most barren and driest places we could find, 
made them a good size, and liberally strewed them with chaff, pine 
shatters, leaves, etc. ‘The food strewed on these places was gener- 
ally cracked corn or whole wheat; anything of a smaller or darker 
grain was apt to be lost, while whole corn was too easily found, 
and at any rate 1 did not feed much whole corn, except on 
winter evenings and very cold days. 
The feeding sheds were placed so as to face south-south-east, 
so that they always caught the early morning rays, and by 
afternoon they were partly in shade. The early rising hens 
always made for these places the very first thing, as soon as they 
had their liberty, but we found that this would not do; these early 
risers would clean the whole food out before the others got a 
chance. All the hens, therefore, were kept in their own. yards, 
until the entire flock had come off the roosts, and to expedite this, 
_a little grain was scattered on the ground and the birds called to 
it. As soon as all were down the gates were opened, and those 
that wanted further feed scampered off to the sheds. They 
lay about these sheds and scratched, went to the dust-baths, rum- 
maged the leaves for insects and wandered about freely until evening, 
when they were again fed all the grain they would eat. ‘This was 
our usual summer routine, and it was very rarely that they did not 
return to their proper houses to lay. In addition to. the nests in 
the houses, we had special boxes scattered over the. grounds for 
