1893 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
635 
ing meal. Just look back at that flock we have just 
left. They are scattering in every direction. There 
is one away down by the pond already. She is prob¬ 
ably looking for a worm and will keep it up all day, 
except when she goes back to lay an egg. Such exer¬ 
cise is fatal to ‘ too much fat.’ ” 
Killing Vermin ; About the House. 
I 
The Deacon's next question was : 
“ How do you manage to get rid of the lice? Our 
hen-house gets so lousy every summer that the hens 
take to the trees to roost.” 
“ I suppose you mean the little brown mites that 
infest the perches.” 
“ Yes ; and also a red louse that is larger.” 
“ Well, you have asked me a hard one now. for 
sure. When a house once gets lousy I guess it is a 
hard matter to clean it out for good. People say that 
kerosene oil on the perches will do it, but I gaess you 
want a lot of ‘eternal vigilance’ to mix with it. I 
don’t pretend to keep entirely free from the pests, 
but I keep them in check so that the hens are profit¬ 
able, and that is the main point. I am sorry for a 
hen that is pestered with lice all night. So I am for 
the thousands of children who sleep in tenement 
houses that are swarming with bed bugs these hot 
nights, although I have not so much sympathy for 
the big folks. However, the children seem to thrive 
and so will the hens if reasonable care is taken to 
keep ahead of the lice.” 
“ Well,” said the Deacon, “ what do you do to keep 
ahead of them ? ” 
“You notice this next house. Those two roosting 
poles over the table are made of 2x3 pine fence rails 
planed very smooth. They are higher than anything 
else in the house that hens can roost upon, and they 
all use them for that purpose. I smear them over 
with kerosene about once a week in hot weather, and 
scrape ti e droppings into that barrel under the table. 
The kerosene evaporates very quickly, however, and 
I find that before the week is up a few lice will some¬ 
times appear this hot weather. I shall try the use of 
coal tar on the perches.” 
“ How can you use it ? ” said the Deacon. “ It will 
stick to the hens’ feet and so'l the egg shells.” 
“ Oh, I think I can manage that. The lice always 
congregate on the under sides of the perches during 
the daytime. I shall try painting the under sides of 
the poles with the tar, and when that gets dry and 
hard I can turn the poles over and paint the other 
sides.” 
“ Sure enough,” said the Deacon. “ Well, here we 
are at the last house,” he continued, “and nearly 
back to the barn. It is quite a tramp, and if you had 
not had that horse and wagon along to carry the feed, 
you would have had more of a load than you could 
carry. Do you have to go over all that tramp after 
dark at night to close those little doors ? ” 
“ Oh, no. When I go around before dark to gather 
the eggs I take this extra weight off the chain upon 
which the door hangs, and when I work my telegraph 
machine, as you call it, the door drops of its own 
weight.” 
Any Money In It ? 
“ Well,” said the Deacon, “ does it pay ? That is 
the main question ?” 
“To be sure it is. It is only an experiment with me 
thus far, but present indications are that it is going to 
pay even better than I at first supposed. I started 
out to prove that stony pasture land that could not 
be profitably tilled could be made to pay a yearly 
profit of $100 per acre by stocking it with 100 hens to 
the acre. You see that first building over there we 
visited. It was stocked with 40 pullets last November. 
Come up to the house and we shall see how they are 
making out. Here is the record : 
Dec. 215 eggs at 38 cents per dozen. $0.84 
Jan. 208 e*gs at 40 cents per dozen. 6.93 
Feb. 3(4 ejfKS at 36 cents per dozen. 10.32 
March 527 eggs at 24 cents per dozen. 10.56 
April ' 645 eggs at 24 cents per dozen. 12.90 
May 693 eggs at 2334 cents per dozen.. 13.57 
June 552 eggs at 24 cents per dozen. 11.04 
July 539 eggs at 25 cents per dozen . 11.25 
Total 3.723 Total 183.41 
The other seven houses stocked last April are doing 
equally well. Present indications are that by Sep¬ 
tember 1 (nine months) they will have paid for the 
building ($40) in addition to paying for themselves 
(60 cents each) and paying for their feed which costs 
about 10 cents per day for the flock of 40.” 
“ How do you get such big prices for eggs ? ” said the 
Deacon. 
“ Why ! do you call those big prices ? I don’t. The 
first man I struck last winter when I werit down to 
the city to look for a market, offered me eight cents 
per dozen above the highest market quotations. As 
that was satisfactory for the present, I did not look 
any further. I expect to find some one who will be 
glad to pay more than that when I get in shape t_ 
send a crate every day and guarantee each egg not 
over 24 hours old.” 
The Deacon sat in a brown study for some time. 
When he looked up at last, his next question was : 
“How long did it take to feed those hens this 
morning?” 
“ Probably about an hour. When I have no one 
along to talk to it takes from three to four minutes to 
each flock.” 
“ Well,” said he, “if my calculations are correct, if 
a man had 20 acres in hens and they paid as well as 
this flock whose record for eight months you have just 
showed me is doing, he could clear in the neighbor¬ 
hood of $3,000 a yeai. My ! Just think of it. I keep 
12 cows on my farm of 100 acres and have hard work 
to sell $600 worth of milk after paying my feed bills.” 
“ Don’t figure too high,” said I; “if I can make them 
pay a profit of $1 a hen I shall be well pleased. The 
months of October and November are to be heard from 
yet, when they will be moulting. There are some 
losses to be reckoned also. Three of the flock have 
died already. In fact, most of the 3,723 dozen eggs 
have been laid by 37 hens.” 
Some Disadvantages of Prosperity. 
“ Well,” said the Deacon, “ I am sorry I came over 
this morning.” , 
Tc my look of astonishment he replied : 
“ Susan has been teasing for a new hen-house ail 
Jwtej 
> 
llliiBM 
Ax Electrical Hex House. Fig. 210. 
summer, and when she hears of this, I shall have to 
build it for her, sure.” 
“ If Susan takes to the business, you fix her out 
with buildings and hens enough to keep her busy an 
hour every morning feeding them anc half an hour at 
night hunting eggs in the old orchard back of your 
house, and if she don’t clear enough money every year 
to buy herself a piano and a silk dress and make her 
‘ Pa ’ a present of a new mowing machine, I shall be 
very much mistaken.” 
“ It won’t be necessary for me to buy her those 
telegraph fixings too, will it ? ” 
“ I don’t know. You can tell by trying. From my 
experience in feeding hens, if I should go out into a 
10 -acre field with 500 or 1,000 hens running at large 
and attempt to feed them from a basket, I should ex¬ 
pect to see them come to meet me from all quarters 
till after a few days I would have the whole crowd 
around me at once. The greedy ones would get more 
than their share and all would get so mixed up that 
they would never all get home to roost. You can buy 
Feeding Trough for Hens. Fig. 211. 
the electric feed boxes much cheaper than you can 
build yards for each flock.” 
As the Deacon rose to go and took his hat from the 
piano, I was reminded of the way I got started in 
studying the possibilities of the American hen. Sev¬ 
eral years ago my wife was like the Deacon’s Susan— 
she wanted to go into the hen business. We had an old 
hog house not in use, so she bought about 50 hens and 
went to raising chickens. She happened to have pretty 
good luck and raised a good lot of them. This was in 
1884. In 1885, when her chickens were about half 
grown, she bantered me one day to buy her out. I 
offered her 20 cents each for them, and she took me 
up. She had bought her own feed, and, when I paid 
her for the chickens, she proudly brought out enough 
savings from her chicken and egg money to buy a good 
organ. To be sure, this has since been traded for a 
piano, and the minks got in to my chickens a few 
nights after I had taken possession and killed 40 of 
them, making me feel blue and her jubilant that she 
had sold out just in time ; but then I got experience. I 
learned that a mink would go through a crack an inch 
wide, and straightway I built a house in which the 
cracks were less than an inch wide. A few days ago 
I heard one of the most prosperous merchants in the 
city of Middletown telling about how his wife keeps 
hens on their city lot. They live in the suburbs and 
have probably half an acre of land around their fine 
dwelling. He said she began to talk of wanting a 
sealskin sack last winter, and he began to plead pov¬ 
erty. He told her he had no money to pay for such 
foolishness. “ By Jinks,” said he, “ if that woman did 
not go and get an old stocking in which she keeps her 
e Kg money and count out enough to pay for the seal¬ 
skin cloak.” o. w. mapes. 
R* N.-Y.—For the benefit of newer subscribers, we 
give a synopsis of Mr. M.’s previous articles. The 
house he uses is shown at Fig. 210. This is to accom¬ 
modate 40 hens. It is 12 feet long, 10 feet wide, eight 
feet high in front and five feet four inches in the rear. 
The floor and roof are of matched spruce, and the 
siding of matched pine. The roof is covered with 
two-ply tarred roofing felt, and the sides lined with 
single-ply tarred paper. The house faces to the east 
with window, door and small entrance, as shown. In¬ 
side, two roosts run the full length of the house at back. 
They are three feet nine inches from the floor, and 
one foot below them is a hinged table to hold the 
droppings. Under the table are two double nests. 
There is also what Mr. M. calls a hen-jail, which is a 
slat coop for broody hens. The feeding troughs are 
all made like the one shown at Fig. 211. A feed-box 
or hopper hangs over the little entrance between the 
door and window. This is connected with the house 
by means of an electric wire. Mr. M. touches a 
button at his house, and this opens the bottom of each 
hopper—out comes the grain, striking on a metal disc 
and scattering over the floor. The hens run at once 
and crowd into the house to eat—the large door has 
been previously closed. Touching another button 
drops a door before the little entrance, and the hens 
are housed until morning. 
“Certified Milk.” 
A CERTIFICATE OF WHAT? 
HEALTH FOR THE LITTLE ONES. 
Part V. 
( Concluded .) 
How the Milk Must Be Delivered. 
We have now carried this matter of produnng 
“certified milk” step by step through the required 
conditions. The last clause of the contract deals with 
its transportation and delivery. Here it is : 
It is hereby understood and agreed that the distribution and trans¬ 
portation of all milk represented as certified, shall be conducted by 
the party of the second part, either in person or by persons employed 
by him; that in transit the rallk'shall not be exposed to any of the 
conditions heretofore forbidden in these contracts: that it shall not 
be subjected to aKltatlon; that it shall not be exposed to the heat of 
the sun, or conveyed between the hours of 10 A. m. and 4 p. m.; that 
the delivery wagons shall be so constructed that the temperature of 
the milk may be maintained during transit, and that before the 
wagons are filled for shipment, the body, the trays and compartments 
shall be flushed with boiling water. It is furthermore agreed that 
the distributing agents shall, during the transfer of the milk from the 
dairy to the purchaser, be subject to the following restrictions, 
namely, that they shall use no tobacco; that they shall take no intoxi¬ 
cating drinks: that they shall not collect the empty containers, nor 
receive money or milk checks from persons recently in, nor take the 
same from houses, nor enter the same, in which Infectious or contag¬ 
ious diseases are known to exist. It is also hereby agreed that the col¬ 
lection of empty bottles from places where infectious or contagious 
diseases are known to exist, shall be made by other persons than 
those employed to deliver milk. That these collections be made by 
wagons not employed in the distribution of the milk, and that before 
these empty bottles shall be returned to the dairy, they shall be car¬ 
ried to a separate building and first be subjected to the process of 
cleaning indicated in a former clause of this contract. 
You see that the milk must all be delivered before 
10 A. m. This necessitates quick and prompt delivery. 
The dairy is some five miles from Montclair. The milk 
is not to go through the hands of irresponsible agents. 
If that were done, Mr. Francisco could not be held re¬ 
sponsible for any breach of the contract. Notice how 
careful the doctors are to enforce cleanliness every¬ 
where. Everything about the wagon must feel the 
taste of boiling water. No tobacco and rum about 
this business. 
Facts About the Dairy. 
Mr. Francisco is now milking about 100 cows, which 
average about 800 quarts per day. Figuring this at 
12 cents a quart, you get an idea of the income from 
the business. As a matter of fact, Mr. F. took in 
$14,000 in cash last year from an average of less than 
100 milking cows. That was at the old rate of eight 
cents a quart. The Dew rate will increase this by 50 
per cent. Mr. F. started with 28 acres and a house, 
and eight cows and two heifers. Now he has 400 acres 
and this great milk business, all built up by the cow ! 
He wants to work up to 200 milkers and the young and 
dry stock needed to make this number good. He says 
he may have to give up trying to raise his own stock, 
but it is safer to raise them, for then you know just 
what you have in the barn. You don’t need to keep 
an animal two years to see what she will do. Most 
cows “ do what mother did.” He wants most of his 
milk in winter, and thus arranges for a good many 
calves in the fall. Erery cow in the barn is recorded 
in Dana’s Breeding Book and an accurate account 
is kept of service and calving. 
1 have said that the grain bill on this farm amounts 
to $4,000 per year. All that Mr. F. attempts to raise 
