ILLINOIS STATE DAI J? YMEN'S ASSOCIATION. 83 



Separate your cockerels from your pullets as soon as they begin to 

 €row, and sell them just as soon as you can, for a two pound chicken at 

 10c per pound comes to just as much as a four pound oneat 5c per "pound. 



Never keep a male bird of any kind with your general flock of laying 

 hens, especially in the winter. Your hens will lay more eggs, will be 

 stronger and less liable to disease, and an infertile egg will keep five times 

 as long as a fertile one. 



Be sure and get rid of all your young roosters by or before Christ- 

 mas, for if they are not large enough to sell or make chicken pie of, kill 

 them for they will freeze to death or the hogs will have them. And right 

 here is where the hog first acquires the chicken eating habit. 



It makes no difference what breed or variety you prefer, the methods 

 of culture are the same. But remember this, you must cater to the 

 market, for the market will not cater to you. If the market demands a 

 yellow-legged, yellow-skinned chicken, that is the chicke nyou must raise. 



In the fall and early winter cull down your flock hard and always keep 

 less than you think you ought to, rather than more, for a large flock will 

 not pay in the same ratio as a smaller one. This is the reason why you 

 should get rid of all half grown, half dead scallawags, for they take up the 

 room and breed lice and distemper, and just before spring they die, which 

 is just what you ought to have helped them to do in the fall. 



Eggs pay better than chickens, but your laying hen must have some 

 shell-making material, of which ground oyster shells is the best. But if 

 eggs is your staple object you must breed and feed for eggs, for the all- 

 purpose hen, like the all-purpose ccw or horse, if they ever existed, are 

 now among the lost arts. 



The best feed I ever gave young chickens was cheese curd made from 

 sour milk mixed with a little corn meal. The best feed for growing chicks 

 is sour milk and wheat, and the best feed for laying hens is wheat and 

 sour milk. More than one-half of the chickens hatched on the farm are 

 stunted before they are four weeks old for want of good, wholesome drink, 

 and a stunted chicken is a naif dead chicken, and an easy prey to lice and 

 diseases. 



