TWENTY-NINTH FRUIT-GROWEES' CONVENTION. 



191 



EXPERIENCES OF THREE WOMEN IN RUNNING A POULTRY 



RANCH. 



By GERTRUDE WILSON, of Petaluma. 

 (Read by Mrs. Sherman.) 



MRS. SHERMAN. Mr. Chairman, and ladies and gentlemen: I 

 must crave your indulgence, as the lady who was to have read this 

 paper has just sent it to me. I have not read it over, but I will do the 

 best I can with it. 



We began our venture three years ago last March. " We " means 

 three middle-aged women — my two sisters and myself. We were provi- 

 dentially led to a small place on the outskirts of Petaluma. We rented 

 the ranch (3^ acres) and bought all the outfit already there, consisting 

 of incubators, brooders, houses, wire fencing, many useful tools, and 

 three dozen hens, forty pullets, and about four hundred chicks about 

 six weeks old. 



We set an incubator at once. As the man we bought out had one 

 nearly ready to hatch, we had the benefit of watching the eggs cared 

 for and the chicks come out in that before we had to wrestle with our 

 own. We succeeded fairly well with it, and in the fall had quite a fine 

 flock for the winter-laying hens. 



I remember most clearly our experience in teaching those chicks we 

 bought how to roost. As soon as we could get to it we prepared for them 

 some nice perches in the middle of the room, shutting the chicks out of 

 the brooders; then we all arranged for a free evening and attempted to 

 make those poor little things roost. We were told to take them one by 

 one and gently put them on a stick; if left to themselves they would 

 pile up in the corners and smother. Some of them stayed on the perches, 

 but most of them would hop down and hike away to the corners again. 

 We worked in grim silence for some time; then the spell was broken, 

 and we compared notes and commented on the depravity of chicks. I 

 believe we did get them all on the sticks, but it was a hard evening's work. 

 After a few nights they got some idea of it, and in the course of time 

 they learned to sleep on the perches. But the next lot were treated in 

 a different fashion. We made an inclosed platform of laths so that 

 they could go nowhere else when they came in at night. And we have 

 always used something of the kind since. The chicks are always quite 

 frantic the first night, and you feel sure half of them will be killed; 

 but after the first night it is not so hard on them. Of course when 

 they are changed to the open roosts they are sometimes troublesome by 

 wanting to sit in the corners, but a few nights' discipline gets them all 

 in line on the sticks. We always sigh with great relief when they have 

 learned to roost in grown-up style. 



