33 POULTHT rEBDING AND FATTENING 



taken away, leaving them a little hungry. Then the 

 next feeding time they will be looking for more. They 

 would not stand this high feeding process very long at 

 a time, but when they are to go to market in two or 

 three weeks, they can be quickest finished oflE in this 

 manner. Chickens which are to be kept a longer time 

 must be fed less, kept hungry all the time, so that they 

 are ready to fly out of the pen when the man comes 

 around with the feed. They must be kept scratching. 

 The best we can do, we lose an average of three or four 

 a day in winter. 



"When the chickens are wanted for market they are 

 carried in baskets to the killing house, where they are 

 dispatched by stabbing the back of their mouth with a 

 lancet. The head is not removed. They are not fed 

 for twenty-four hours before killing and the entrails 

 are not removed. They are dry picked and packed in 

 pairs in pasteboard boxes made to fit. There is an ice 

 box for cooling the dressed poultry in summer." 



Intensive farming in or near a city, where the 

 market is, can be carried on in no better way than in tho 

 raising of broilers. The following account of a city 

 broiler plant is by W. M. Hayes, Hampden county, 

 Mass. : "My lot is fifty by 150 feet, with a; two-tene- 

 ment house and stable that accommodates nine horses 

 and sheds to cover wagons, sleighs, etc. The brooder 

 quarters, as shown in Figure 3, occupy the second floor 

 of the wagon shed, fourteen by fifty-two feet. The only 

 heat obtained is from tlie brooder stoves. 



"The brooders are arranged in a series, side by side, 

 each two and one-half by four feet and without hovers. 

 They are entirely homemade affairs and I consider them 

 as practical as any without a regulator. One of the 

 incubators holds 360 to 400 hens' eggs, the other 110 

 eggs. My first hatch was December 3. From then 

 until summer I hatched 1279 chicks and raised as 



