AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
331 
derfully mistaken. The air they breathe is foetid 
with the stench of the fowls ; the food fairly 
smells before they eat it, and the whole flesh is 
tainted with the foul food, foul air, and foul wa¬ 
ter. We have sat down to a table with such 
poultry cooked upon it, and the smell was as bad 
as that of the coop they inhabited before slaugh¬ 
ter, and this too, was in the finest corn and poul¬ 
try regions in the world, where the best, and very 
perfection of dressed and cooked poultry should 
abound. 
We state the above methods as the best way of 
fattening poultry. Poultry may be fattened, we 
admit, and very well too, by letting them run at 
large, and giving them plenty of whole grains, 
but not half so cheaply, or readily, as by our pro¬ 
cess; and when we consider the enormous quan¬ 
tities of poultry raised in the United States, both 
for market and home family consumption, and the 
great quantities of food expended in the fattening 
process, the increased aggregate expense of the 
common loose way of doing it over ours, is mil¬ 
lions of dollars annually. 
The killing and preparing poultry for market is 
also an important item of saving-and profit, in 
which our last volume has given ample direc¬ 
tions, and we may possibly refer to them in our 
next number. 
i *Q -- I) -MU I H IgS *— - " . . - 
Blinks from a Lantern..XIII, 
BY DIOGENES REDIVIVUS. 
A GRAND HEN SPECULATION 
Since that grand practical joke of classic days, 
the presenting of a plucked rooster, as a happy 
illustration of the philosopher’s definition of a man, 
viz. “a featherless biped,” there has been no such 
hen speculation as Higgins has just brought to a 
successful issue. Your readers will recollect this 
gentleman farmer, as the sagacious individual 
who imported “land pike” from Great Britain, 
with extra bristles, as a rare breed of swine, and 
fed ruta-bagas at the rate of three bushels a day 
each, to bullocks, to test their value as an article 
of food, giving them nothing else. 
Last Fall, a new idea struck Higgins, and as 
luck would have it, it was just at the close of a 
successful shipment of cotton, bringing him in a 
couple of thousands in clean cash, that he had no 
immediate use for. He had the means of imme¬ 
diate realization, and Higgins went out to his 
country seat, happy as a lien over a new laid egg. 
He had seen in one of his agricultural papers—for 
he takes a half dozen, and reads them—a splendid 
account of “ profits on poultry,” based upon the 
success of a small farmer’s wife, out in Rhode 
Island. She kept twenty hens according to the 
statement, raised a hundred chickens, and sold 
two hundred dozen eggs, clearing fifty dollars 
above expenses by the operation. The hens were 
attended to at intervals of time, when Mrs. Smith 
had nothing else to do, so that she could look 
upon her roll of fifty dollars as so much clear gain. 
Higgins was an excellent accountant, and he 
immediately made a calculation of raising poul¬ 
try upon a large scale. If with twenty hens, 
worth not" to exceed ten dollars, fifty dollars could 
be made, then two hundred and fifty dollars could 
be made with a hundred hens—and twenty-five 
hundred dollars with a thousand hens. The stock 
would cost not to exceed five-hundred dollars, 
and the necessary buildings and fences, not over 
fifteen hundred more. Making a large allow¬ 
ance for disasters, which he could not foresee, 
he could hardly fail to clear two thousand dollars 
by the operation every year. This was a better 
business than any shipping he was ever engaged 
in, and it would have this advantage, if success¬ 
ful, that he could live at home with his family, in¬ 
stead of being off in the city half of the time or 
more. 
To make the thing sure, so that there could be 
no mistake about it, he put it upon paper, thus : 
1000 Stock fowls. $500. 
Rentand intereston buildings worth $1500.. 150 
Feed of fowls for a year, say. 750. 
Wages of a woman to attend them. 100. 
$1500. 
On the balance sheet he might safely calculate 
at the end oftheyearon 1000 fowls.$ 500. 
1000 chickens worth. 500. 
100,000 eggs at one cent and-a-ha'lf each.. 1500. 
Manure. 100. 
Total value of sales and stock on hand.. .$2600. 
Deduct expenses, as above. 1500. 
Profit.$1100. 
This was figuring very low, and only allowing 
less than half the profit realized by the Rhode- 
Island woman. He really expected to do much 
better, for he would have his hen palace so warm¬ 
ly built, that the hens would lay all through Win¬ 
ter, when he could realize from thirty to forty 
cents a dozen for them. He expected, too, to 
raise two thousand chickens instead of one, and 
meant, if possible, to make them shell out over 
a hundred thousand eggs. He had known hens 
to lay two hundred eggs a year. Higgins was so 
well pleased with this speculation upon paper, 
that he determined to carry it out at once. He 
selected the southern slope of a hill, covering 
about an acre, and inclosed it with a high picket 
fence, so that no intruders should rob him of his 
expected treasures. In the middle he erected 
bis hen palace, a two story building, with an un¬ 
derground apartment, well lighted upon the 
south, for Winter accommodation. It was fur¬ 
nished with any quantity of nests, lined with 
clean straw, and with capacious boxes holding 
bushels of eggs. The peak of the roof was 
mounted with a tower, full of pigeon holes and 
boxes. On top of the tower a huge gilt cock was 
perched, a very ornamental and. useful bird ; for 
at the hour of twelve, noon, he regularly clapped 
his wooden wings, calling all hands to dinner. 
This device greatly astonished the natives, and 
whatever might be thought of Higgins and his 
speculation by his neighbors, this gilt rooster was 
a revered institution. A town clock, in the shape 
of a bird, was a novelty even in this part Ox 
Yankee land. 
Higgins had heard that there was danger of 
crowding hens into too narrow quarters, and to 
prevent this calamity, he ran out two cheap wings 
from the main building, two hundred feet long 
each, and divided them up into ten apartments 
each, so that he could separate them, in case 
disease should make its appearance, among the 
fowls—a calamity that he did not at all antici¬ 
pate. 
The two thousand dollars were at length ex¬ 
pended, the hen homestead completed, and stock¬ 
ed with a thousand fowls. Higgins was not par¬ 
ticularly select in his stock, a hen being a hen 
with him, whether Dorking, Shanghai, Chitta¬ 
gong, Black Spanish, Jersey Blue, Creole, or 
Leghorn, or a mixture of all these with the Dung¬ 
hill bird of the natives. He had few thorough 
breds, except a lot of Game fowls, which he in¬ 
troduced on the second week of the experiment. 
The Game rooster treated the rest of the cocks 
as game, and killed four of them the first day he 
was in the yard, before Higgins had time to in¬ 
terfere. This disaster, however, was soon rem¬ 
edied and the fowls did remarkably well, until 
they had consumed all the grass in the yard, 
and laid out the litters that had been conceived 
in their old homes, where they had plenty of room. 
Higgins was jubilant for a couple of months, and 
eggs were sent off by the barrel, to the New- 
York market, during the months of October and 
November, last year. As the Winter set in, and 
the fowls begin to feel the effects of their con¬ 
finement, the laying began to grow “ small by de¬ 
grees and beautifully less,” until a dozen a day 
was the utmost laying capacity of the whole es¬ 
tablishment. A cold snap came on in January, 
and all the egg fountains were sealed up, as tight 
as the water in the fish pond. “ Nary egg ” was 
the stated morning report of Bridget, for three 
weeks. The roosters crowed lustily, and the 
hens clucked and cackled, as if they were getting 
ready to do a big business, but they did not shell 
out. 
As the .Spring opened, the egg fountains were 
again opened, but in diminishing numbers. The 
hens indeed laid, some of them eggs, and other 
some laid low. Many of them were minus toes, 
badly frost bitten, some were lame, and a great 
many were diseased with the staggers, and flut¬ 
tered about as if they were badly corned. The 
result of the speculation comes out in the fol¬ 
lowing conversation, which occurred as I alight¬ 
ed from my wagon at Higgins’ door, lantern in 
hand. 
“ I thought, Diogenes, that you gentlemen of 
the agricultural press, represented poultry rais¬ 
ing as a highly pleasing and profitable business ; 
that no stock on the farm began to pay so well.” 
“ That is true, if you know how to take care 
of them, and do not get so many on hand, as to 
have them interfere with one another.” 
“ Well, I tried it last Fall, got all the fixings 
ready, at a cost of two thousand dollars, had 
plenty of eggs for two months, and then the fowls 
begun to droop, and I have had more or less of 
them sick ever since. One hundred and fifty died 
in the course of the Winter, and they have been 
dying ever since.” 
“ Why didn’t you sell them, Higgins 1” 
“Nobody would buy, because they were afraid 
of diseased fowls, and I dare not eat them my¬ 
self, for the same reason. I am now in a pretty 
fix, can’t sell, can’t give away, with as pretty a 
hospital on hand as any doctor would like to at¬ 
tend. Guess I will lose five hundred dollars by 
the experiment, clean cash ; glad to get off so.” 
“Boarding is excellent business, Higgins, but 
you should not put a hundred people into rooms 
meant for ten, some of them might leave.” 
“ Just so, I see, half of mine have left already.” 
Bees and Tin Pans Again. 
I. S. Wise, of Norfolk Co., Va., writes to the 
Agriculturist-. If a young swarm seem inclined 
to leave the old homestead, get up the best pos¬ 
sible imitation of a coming storm. The instincts 
of bees prompt them to settle at once in a clus 
ter (if on the wing) for protection. This can be 
done by firing a gun, beating a drum or tin pan 
and throwing water. An absconding swarm may 
generally be stopped in this way, but I have no¬ 
ticed that such runaways seldom do well, so I 
now just let them go. Bees (unlike the lords of 
creation) will not leave their home without cause. 
Seek rather to find out and remove the cause, 
than to detain them by trickery. 
