November. 1907 



THE GARDEN MAGAZINE 



199 



Start with Only a Few Birds 



"^TOBODY starting in the poultry busi- 

 -L ^ ness can, possibly avoid failure if he 

 attempts to care for 1,000 birds without 

 previous experience. Begin in a small way 

 (not more than fifty birds), give your time to 

 studying the needs of your flock and learn 

 what the conditions of your locality are by 

 actual experience, not by hearsay. 



After things are in working order, start a 

 balance sheet. Charge all expenses, includ- 

 ing the cost of your own labor at the local 

 rates of pay. Keep this up for a year. When 

 you have mastered everything concerning the 

 care and management and your balance 

 sheet shows a satisfactory profit, you are then 

 prepared to expand the business as rapidly as 

 conditions will permit. 



The approximate cost of a plant could not 

 be determined without being familiar with the 

 local conditions. Five square feet of floor 

 should be allowed for each bird in a house 

 seven feet high. This may seem altogether 

 too liberal an amount, but one of the fore- 

 most authorities on poultry recently proved by 

 experiment that twelve birds that had sixty 

 square feet of floor space actually laid more 

 eggs in one year than twenty-five other birds 

 that were crowded into the same amount of 

 space. Ten square feet of yard space is 

 sufficient for each bird. 



Divide the house into pens that will hold 

 not more than thirty birds. This helps to 

 prevent sickness and gives weak birds a 

 better chance in the scrimmage at feeding 

 time. Build your own house, but buy the 

 brooders ready made until you have had 

 more experience. 



What has been said about hens is equally 

 true about raising squabs. Some good 

 advice which a veteran squab breeder 

 recently gave to a beginner was, " Don't start 

 with over twenty-five pairs of birds." He 

 himself started with a single pair. Close 

 observation of every pair to know what they 

 are doing, a record of their performances, 

 proper feeding, clean houses, well ventilated 

 and sunny, precautions against disease, are 

 some of the requisites to success. 



New York. David Thayer. 



How to Have Fertile Eggs 



OF ALL the unnecessary taxes on the 

 poultry keeper, the useless, not to 

 say worse than useless, rooster is the worst. 

 A farmer with about twenty-five or thirty 

 hens recently asked me where he could get 

 another rooster. He already had three, 



but was fearful that the eggs would not hatch 

 well. I should say that he already had one 

 too many. For years my yards have had a 

 less number than the orthodox requirements 

 of the professional poultry writers, and the 

 eggs are usually highly fertile, too. One 

 white Leghorn rooster to twenty-five hens 

 was all we had, and an infertile egg was a 

 rarity. Time after time customers would 

 report fifteen chicks from fifteen eggs. I 

 calculate about half as many Wyandotte 

 hens to a rooster as of the Leghorns, but I 

 don't know that that number is absolutely 

 required. Last March I took off a hen, 

 under which I had set eleven eggs from a 

 yard containing about twenty-five Wyandotte 

 hens and a two-year old rooster, in winter 

 quarters, simply to see what I would get. 

 I had no great expectations. Two of the 

 eggs proved infertile, one was broken, and 

 she has eight lively little balls of down 

 to show what could be done. The eggs were 

 laid in our worst winter weather, too. I 

 don't recommend so many hens with one 

 rooster of the heavier breeds, however. The 

 ideal way is two roosters to a yard, with one 

 confined for a day or two at a time, thus alter- 

 nating them. I have had two running to- 

 gether in a breeding yard, with good results, 

 but they were raised together, and interfered 

 with each other very little. But the average 

 farmer keeps too many roosters (crowers, 

 some New Englanders call them). A large 

 sum of money might be saved in the aggregate 

 by cutting down the number. 



Mass. B. E. Frederick. 



Two Good Berried Plants. 



"PVERYBODY ought to know about 

 -*--' the spindle tree whose two-colored ber- 

 ries make an exceptionally vivid mass of color 

 in November; also the climbing Euonymus 

 which is probably the hardiest evergreen vine. 

 The genus Euonymus contains a dozen 

 hardy shrubs worth growing, most of which 

 have two-colored berries that are conspicuous 



The only green leaves in this picture are those 

 of Euonymus radicans. The bush full of berries is 



E. Europaeus. 



in late autumn, after the leaves have fallen. 

 The structure of the fruit is like that of the 

 common bitter-sweet (Celastrus scandens) in 

 having a brightly colored husk which opens 

 and displays a scarlet-orange berry. There 

 is an extraordinary variety of color in these 

 husks. While the accompanying pictures 

 are faithful photographic portraits, they con- 

 vey no idea of the extraordinary brilliancy 

 of the berries. 



Probably the commonest Euonymus in 

 cultivation is the spindle tree {Euonymus 

 Euro pans), so called because its wood is used 

 to make spindles. This species probably 

 has more varieties than any other. The 

 husk is normally red, but there are varieties 



Red fruits of the spindle tree (Euomimus Europaeus), showing the husK and inner berry 



