192 



TWENTY-NINTH FRUIT-GROWERS' CONVENTION. 



AVe always swing our perches on wire hung from the roof. Some 

 one told us it was a safeguard against vermin, and as we have very 

 little trouble with lice, we believe in the wire. Sometimes, after read- 

 ing in a poultry paper about lice, we get scared and go and look 

 things over, applying coal oil or carbozine, but even with a microscope 

 we fail to find lice on the perches. Occasionally we find that a hen 

 which does not feel well has body lice; but most of our hens seem clean, 

 and we comfort ourselves that vermin can not be doing much harm if 

 we can not find them. 



We whitewash once a year in the early summer. The first year we 

 did it ourselves with a small hand pump. We made a good wash 

 according to government recipe: rice flour, glue, etc., and it stuck. 

 Since then we have hired it done, but the wash is put on so thin that it 

 does not wear so well. The whitewashed houses on the hillside look 

 neater than the weather-beaten ones, and we consider the lime a good 

 thing. We use a great deal of air-slaked lime on the floors of the 

 houses after they have been cleaned. We do that work once a week. 

 I can clean the seven houses in a forenoon. I suppose that in the 

 three and a half years there have not been a half dozen times when 

 we have varied a day in our regular cleaning, and then on account of 

 storms. We have the theory that regularity is a big item in doing the 

 work. It is not so disagreeable if done at regular times, but woe betide 

 thee if the work is neglected. 



Our flocks are healthy. Of course we lose hens, but usually from 

 indigestion. In feeding so many hens together, it must happen that 

 some are overfed, but we have never had numbers taken away by 

 disease. 



We are systematic in our duties. One of the firm is the housekeeper. 

 In the morning the other two go out to care for the flocks; one does the 

 feeding, and the other empties the water troughs and washes them with 

 a broom. (There is water piped to each yard; it is one of the nice 

 things that were done by the former owners of the place.) While the 

 troughs are filling with fresh water, she opens the laying-house doors 

 and shuts the doors of the roosting-houses. Then we go in to our 

 breakfast, after which we are ready for the work of the day. 



We began to have a little income that first fall; but expenses were 

 heavy, as we had to hatch again, and had no old hens to sell, to counter- 

 balance the outlay. 



From the first we did our own work, except the plowing. The first 

 summer a neighbor planted our garden on shares, but since then we 

 have made our own, and I assure you that vegetables taste extra good 

 when they are of your own growing. We set out about one thousand 

 kale plants each year for our hens. 



One of our trials is that men who plow for us do not leave the ground 



