Foot Notes. 
It costs no more to keep good fowls than 
to keep poor ones. 
Game cockerels should be dubbed before 
thev are six months old. 
* 
Let fowls have variety and eerve them 
with “green” and dry food constantly. 
Plan fowl houses so that they will be 
warm in winter and cool in summer, and 
sunny and dry at all times. 
Young chicks should not be permitted to 
roost on perches until they are four month’s 
old, as ii sometimes causes a deformity in 
the breast bone. 
Provide dusting places for all fowls young 
and old. Dry dust from the road, pul¬ 
verized by the wheels of wagons, is excel¬ 
lent for this purpose. 
Danger of over-feeding fowls is a real one 
which is often incurred in the case of adult 
stock, but not to be feared in the young 
growing bird. 
A single feed daily and the allowance of 
a good range in the field and pasture will 
tend to keep your birds in fine condition. 
One cure for egg-eating is to take a sharp 
knife and cut off the ends of the fowl’s 
beaks enough to make them bleed, then 
throw down some china or painted wooden 
eggs for them to try their raw bills on for 
a few days, and you will not be troubled 
any more. 
We have eaten the flesh of every descrip¬ 
tion oJ domestic fowl, from the Bantam to 
the Brahma, old and young. And we know 
that it is altogher more in the feeding of 
poultry, to render their meat toothsome 
when slaughtered, than it is in the sort or 
size of the fowl thus eaten. 
That it pays to keep fowls, few, if any, 
who know how to manage them, will deny; 
but there are thousands of people to-day, 
who could ornament some nook or corner 
in their city or town lots with a small 
flock of our domestic pets, and it would be 
well worth while for them to do so. 
Give growing chicks a taste of boiled 
potatoes, and notice how they “go for 
them.” In many places the potato crop 
is large and this vegetable cheap. It is 
even cheaper than corn, but if fed in con¬ 
nection with corn and other articles of diet, 
it is a great help to raise young stock econ¬ 
omically and successfully. 
Don’t ship fowls without drinking ves¬ 
sels, when you can get one by having a 
mouthpiece put on an old oyster can, let¬ 
ting it project at an angle of about forty de¬ 
grees and putting a small hole in the can to 
let the water down as required by the 
fowls. Of course it must be air-tight, 
then by turning it on its back it is easily 
filled. This can will keep the water clean, 
if it is fastened at a little distance from the 
bottom. 
Poultry require plenty of house-room, 
for crowding them on their roosts or hav¬ 
ing illy built, dilapidated or damp houses, 
is conductive to disease. If, on account of 
breeding more than one variety, or because 
you have fruit and vegetables you wish to- 
keep the birds from, you have to keep the 
fowls in restricted quarters, by all means, 
give them all the exercise room you possi¬ 
bly can, and there is far more danger of 
giving them too little than too much. 
It is of no avail to attempt to raise good 
chickens, or expect to have eggs from your 
birds in season, unless a goodly measure of 
their natural requirements in domestication 
are observed, and a judicious system of 
care and feeding is adopted for their ad¬ 
vancement. With such attention and by 
the observance of the advice of older fan¬ 
ciers, there is no good reason why poultry 
may not be advantageously kept by any 
man or woman who possesses taste for thia 
simple rural employment. But don’t ex¬ 
pect that the poultry business will “run 
itself,” any more than any other business. 
No gains without pains. Rex. 
In Dr. Lawes’ experiments potatoes were 
planted six successive years, some on land 
receiving no manure, and one piece re¬ 
ceiving fourteen tons of barnyard manure 
per acre yearly. The field unmanured, 
rapidly diminished in yield, as might be 
expected; but the fact most remarkable is 
that another field, with a dressing of 650 
pounds of alkaline salts, produced a better 
crop than that which had the stable ma¬ 
nure. 
Promises made in the time of affliction, require a 
better memory than people commonly possess. 
