1 ‘102 
235 
MAPES, THE HEN MAN. 
Poultry and Pig Papers. 
A Hen Dairy. —The editor has said 
all that it is necessary to say about 
“Mapes the Hen Man” by way of intro¬ 
duction. He seems to think there is 
something "under his hat” that will in¬ 
terest readers. 1 got the idea a good 
many years ago that the man who could 
successfully keep enough hens, so that 
he could go to market with a crate of 
eggs, and guarantee every egg in the 
crate to be not over 24 hours old, would 
have an advantage over the average 
egg-seller that could bo readily turned 
into cash. The idea “stuck” until final¬ 
ly 1 sold a dairy of 20 cows, and a good 
milk route in the nearby town where i 
was getting live cents for every quart 
of milk I made in order to try a hen 
dairy. After 10 years of experience 1 
find that I have a whole lot yet to learn 
about hens, but i would not trade the 
hens back for cows if I had the oppor¬ 
tunity to-day. Did 1 find a ready sale 
for eggs guaranteed not over 24 hours 
old? Most assuredly. I have never 
tried to sell any eggs at retail, but con¬ 
fined my sales exclusively to the regular 
grocery trade in New Yorit and adja¬ 
cent cities. They have always sold 
readily in a wholesale way at from live 
to eight cents per dozen above market 
quotations. This of itself makes quite 
an item, where one is producing a crate 
or more a day, and is one of the best 
arguments in favor of the hen dairy. 
Wo gathered over two crates (743) yes¬ 
terday (March 1C). 1 have not taken a 
census recently, but think we have about 
1,500 hens, counting a lot of old stock 
(five and six years old) that are to go 
to the butcher’s as soon as their Spring 
work is done. We hope to reach 1,000 
eggs a day before May 1. 
What Hun? What breed of fowls do 
I keep? 
White Leghorns almost exclusively. 
Why? 
In order to deal with the best gro¬ 
cery trade, your eggs must not only be 
fresh, but they must also be uniform in 
size and color. The trade in New York 
City is best pleased with a white-shelled 
egg. The White Leghorn fills the bill 
the best of any of the breeds 1 have 
tried. I have tried Brown Leghorns. 
Wyandottes, Plymouth Rocks, Minor- 
cas and some others. The Brown Leg¬ 
horns laid too small eggs us pullets. 
The Mlnorcas lay large white eggs, but 
the cockerels make unsalable broilers, 
and the old hens do not sell well on ac¬ 
count of color of skin and pin feathers. 
Then, too, their eggs are often too big. 
If an egg sticks up above the paste¬ 
board fillers, the weight of the eggs and 
covers above are liable to crush the 
shell before it gets into market, making 
a general “muss” in the crate, which is 
to bo avoided. My strain of White Leg¬ 
horns lay eggs plenty big enough to sat¬ 
isfy the trade, and that is all I am after. 
A larger egg means a heavier feed bill. 
I weighed a basketful just, as they were 
gathered from the nests this noon, and 
the 200 eggs weighed 26 pounds four 
ounces. This is an average of 2.1 ounces 
each; 199 of them will pass inspection, 
only one being too small, and none of 
them too big. There are other reasons 
why I prefer the White Leghorn, which 
I will speak of some other time. 
I’m Profits. —We have just finished 
marketing a lot of Winter shot.es that 
wore fed as an experiment. 1 have 
thought for some time that the food 
requirements of a pig are very similar 
to those of a hen. In order to test the 
matter more fully this lot of pigs were 
fed by themselves, and a strict account 
lo pt of food consumed and pork pro¬ 
duced. About. November 1 I went out 
among my neighbors and bought 24 
sucking pigs, five to eight weeks old, 
paying $49 for the lot. As soon as they 
began to get. big enough to dress about 
100 pounds each, we began to butcher 
and sell, the last being sold about 
March 1. The account stands as fol¬ 
lows; 
DR. 
24 pigs . $49.00 
'1.300 Pm. balanced ration. 00.20 
34 cans condensery waste_ 17.00 
Total .$126.20 
< ;r. 
2.302 lbs. pork / sd XM> cents.$100.67 
128 lbs. pork <fi) 9 cents. 11.52 
Total .$207.19 
Deduct $49 first invested in the pigs 
Imni both sides of the account, and it 
will be seen that $77.20 worth of food 
was turned by the pigs into $159.19 
worth of pork in about four months’ 
time. This gives a profit of over 100 per 
cent for labor. I made one bad mistake 
which reduced the profit. 1 got some 
waste milk at. the condensery in town, 
which I thought would be cheap feed. 
I’his proved too rich for the pigs (con¬ 
taining some sugar) and sickened them 
R ° that two of them died outright. 
A Bai.ancicd Ration.—O ne of our 
local feed dealers came to me a few 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
years ago, and wanted a formula for 
mixing a good poultry food. His idea 
was that a good many of his customers 
would prefer to buy their chicken feed 
all in oue bag, instead of buying a lit¬ 
tle of the grains, a little bran and mid¬ 
dlings, a little meat scrap, a little clover, 
bone, etc. 1 gave him what 1 consid¬ 
ered at the time a good balanced ration 
for a hen. It consisted of a ground mix¬ 
ture of the grains, to which was added 
wheat bran and middlings, meat meal 
and bone llour, combined so as to give 
a nutritive ratio of between 1:5 and 1:6. 
This he mixes in large lots and calls it 
Mapes's Balanced Ration. 1 have grad¬ 
ually come to buying of him instead of 
bothering to mix it myself In small lots. 
When 1 refer to a balanced ration it will 
be understood that it is this mixture, 
if there is a missing link in it, the link 
seems to be supplied by skim-milk. It 
was this mixture which was fed to the 
above lot of pigs. Except when 1 was 
using the 34 cans of milk, the dry feed 
was simply thrown upon a clean barn 
lloor and the door thrown open. After 
tuo pigs had “cleaned the dish ’ they 
were driven out and the door closed 
until next meal time. They had clean 
warm water to drink and a box stall 
(not specially warm) in an old cow 
barn, for sleeping quarters. One little 
black sow that started out as the 
“runt,” gained 20 pounds in 12 days 
after she got to growing. 
Incurator Vjsnti cation. —The Dea¬ 
con is an old friend of mine who has a 
great knack for asking questions and 
making suggestions. 1 had not em¬ 
barked very far in the hen business be¬ 
fore 1 discovered that there are a good 
many generally accepted theories about 
the poultry business that will not 
stand the test of practice. I am well 
satisfied, in my own mind, that lots of 
incubator chicks die in the shell for 
want of sufficient pure air. Most manu¬ 
facturers of incubators proceed on the 
theory that the impure air settles to the 
bottom of the egg chamber, and that by 
forcing ventilation from the bottom ^t 
is readily removed. They say that car¬ 
bon dioxide is heavier than the other 
gases of the air, and therefore settles 
to the floor. 
I )oes it? 
If I understand it aright, gases of dif¬ 
fering gravity, when once mixed or dif¬ 
fused, do not separate again readily, as 
no liquids of differing gravity, l wai-. 
discussing this point with the Deacon 
the other day. 
“Why don’t you test it for yourself,” 
said the Deacon, as he began to look 
around in the shop. 
We hunted up a lamp, and an extra 
large and deep tin milk cooler. 
"Now,” said he, “we will invert the 
cooler, and fasten the lamp well up in¬ 
to it. If the scientists are right, the 
lamp will go out as soon as the oxygen 
is exhausted, if we close the mouth of 
the cooler.” 
So we lit the lamp, set the cooler 
mouth down tight on tho lloor, and 
awaited results. In about 15 minutes 
we lifted the cooler and, sure enough, 
the lamp had gone out. 
“Now,” said he, “we will try again. 
This time we will suspend the cooler up 
near the ceiling. This will leave tho 
mouth of the cooler open, with nothing 
to prevent the heavy carbonic acid gas 
from settling out of the cooler. As it 
settles down, of course, pure air will 
rise and fill the vacuum, and feed the 
flame.” 
So we lit the lamp again, and watched 
for results. This time we could look 
up into the cooler and watch the flame. 
Did that heavy gas fall down out ol 
the cooler? The flame said no. It did 
not exactly go out as it did In the other 
case when the mouth of the cooler was 
closed, but it soon dwindled down until 
it looked about the size of a pin head. 
When we pulled it down out of the 
ccoler and into the pure air, it started 
up at once to a lull-sized flame. 
"I pity the chicken,” said the Deacon, 
“that has to depend on the heavy im¬ 
pure air settling down out of an incu¬ 
bator.” 
Will some of our scientific friends tell 
us how the different gases of the air 
are mixed? Do the valleys get all the 
heavy gas and the mountain tops all 
the light gas? o. w. marks. 
PATENT GROOVED 
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Moll K 
WIIY 
■* UOOII HONEST REASONS YOU 
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$70.00 Huffily $44.06. Free Catalog. Stive* Money. 
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llnrnctt*, $8.96. 
[Low-Down, Broad Tire 
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FARMERS’ HANDY WAGON (JO., Saginaw, Mich. 
Handy Farm Wagons 
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PICK OUT 
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j • 
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, f/t>n««r4 4 if ihm t r *4 Trial Ytan .\ 
Station K , Kalamazoo, Michigan. 
They All Hang 
TOGETHER ** 
Sad< le V of vonr Iocs! 1 ;. !f y °" b "£ a lh, « y ’ fringe. Harness nr 
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*^bS5TSp 
SPLIT HICKORY VEHICLES 
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Station 39 Cincinnati, O. 
K 
I 
9 
ZMIz/’ACTUMK 
Direct oraii 
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GUARANTFF 1 ’'Y c '* 1 WL ' L ’k’s trial, and if not perfectly 
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No. 5034. 
Concord 
Hprlng 
bunny 
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Most I.lherul (I lie r mid (o in p Ic to 
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KKNT Fit K 14- No miitlcr when, where,or 
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Wenlern twice and Distributing llouno, St.. I .on in. Mo. 
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Write to tho nearest ullluc—NT. I.OI'IK or OOI.IIMBI'H. 
No. 
A456 
AA REIrfaPanf' hum the ordinary buggy, I* our latest sty). 
iUUi umereni *<»■»*« w.,,.0»utan«e a*i« 
■ — with l ull collnr which keens out .11 duiil mid 
_ _ ^_ mud, run. 1000 milvn without moiling. Combined Quick Shift Shaft 
Coupler and An tl-Kul tier, positively prevent. nil muling, ran change from 
.hull lo pole in omtndmilo. W IiocIm mill 4sdir, every .tick of timber guaranteed best second 
■Is*.) 
growth hickory, every lorglng nml holt bent Norw.y iron. (Wheels furnished .ny ilu.) 
l’iiino Body, 20. 22 or 24 Inches wide, 65 In. long. Corning Rudy, at lo. wide. 
THltimiflriC ' S l' rlll K> :l ‘shlou .ml back,upholstered with bust grade gold figured 
■ ■ ■ ■IlllllliyOe green velvetor whipcord; high wing, on sent cushion. Top 
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I too lining, bottom of bully nnd pnu.l. 
•ondcloth trimming., Unrk top llnlug 
logciuhionand back,upholstered with best grade gold figured 
■— velvetor w lilpeord; high wing, on sent cushion. Top 
_ r to match went trimming., 
stsy. pinked anil stilt-nod u special design lo match top il 
I'll noted to match trimmings. (l eather or dark broadcloth trimmings, dark top llulug 
anu carpet to match when dr.lreu.) 
NirLfvl Mmitlf iflftC fail, panel back rail, prop nuts, neat handles 
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MARVIN SMITH COMPANY, 63 N. JEFFERSON ST.* CHICAGO, ILLINOIS. 
