MAPES, THE HEN MAN 
The Wisdom of Hindsight. 
I have sometimes been charged with being a 
“theorist,” and am quite willing to plead guilty to the 
charge. Theories are all right if you only get hold 
of the right one. Probably most of the known laws 
of nature were first theories in some person’s brain, 
before they 
were known to 
be laws. An 
ounce of prac¬ 
tice, however, 
beats a pound 
of theory in 
most cases. 
On page 367 
I wrote as fol¬ 
lows: “For this 
reason we have 
decided that 
the time spent 
each evening 
closing the 
doors is time 
well spent, 
since this is 
the best time 
to remove ail 
broody hens 
from the nests. 
This avoids the 
danger of hav¬ 
ing the nests 
become lousy,” 
etc. That was 
theory. On this 
page I can 
write that af¬ 
ter putting the 
theory to the 
test I have not 
seen a lousy 
nest this sea¬ 
son. This is 
practice, and 
quite conclu¬ 
sive practice, 
since no other 
p r e c a u tion 
whatever has 
been used to 
avoid lousy 
nests. We have 
not touched a 
nest with any 
keros ene or 
other lice de- 
s t r o yer, and 
have continued 
to use the 
same old nests 
in use last sea¬ 
son, some of 
which were 
then decidedly 
lousy. The 
nests have 
been m constant use during the day, since over 100,000 
eggs have been laid in them since the advent of hot 
weather. The nests are on the floor, while the 
perches on which the hens pass the night are above 
the roosting table. If these perches are watched and 
kept free from lice there will be no danger of lice in 
any other portion of the house. I wonder, by the 
way, whether a living tree, in which chickens roost 
at night, ever gets lousy? Did anyone ever see the 
mites out of doors in a tree? 
Will a hen that rears a late brood of chicks lay in 
Autumn any better than other hens? In a recent 
number of The R. N.-Y. I said that the surest way 1 
know to get a hen to lay well in October and Novem¬ 
ber when eggs are scarce and high, is to let her hatch 
and rear a brood of chicks from July 1 to September 
15. That was theory. My Wyandotte hen that I 
placed in one of my brooder apartments about July 
15 in care of a brood of chicks, has not been outside 
yet, but she began to lay before September 1, and 
is now laying regularly. This is practice. We shall 
see whether or not she will keep it up during the 
Autumn. She did not wait until she weaned the 
chicks, but laid a number of eggs while still hovering 
the chicks, and was in full moult when she began to 
lay. This latter fact is what surprised me. Is it pos¬ 
sible for a hen to grow a new coat of feathers and 
continue to lay eggs at the same time? Who can tell? 
Is it not wonderful what a lot of education we can 
get through our mistakes? Wonderful, too, how the 
ideas we get in that way “stay with us.” If our edu¬ 
cation could be expressed in dollars and cents, the 
knowledge we 
get in this way 
should have 
several ciphers 
following it, as 
compared with 
the same 
k n o w 1 e dge 
gleaned from a 
book, or from 
some other 
p e r s o n’s ex- 
p e r i e n ce. A 
year ago I had 
a lot of young 
sows intended 
for breeders, 
which were al¬ 
lowed to run in 
the fields. Sev- 
eral of the 
sows were due 
to farrow in 
February. We 
delayed separ¬ 
ating them too 
long, and the 
first one far¬ 
rowed in the 
same pen 
where a half 
dozen other 
sows were 
kept, one cold 
night. All her 
pigs were dead 
in the morn¬ 
ing, and most- 
1y devoured. 
As I stood 
looking over 
in the pen I 
decided that a 
record should 
be kept in fu- 
ture which 
would enable 
us to know 
when to pre¬ 
pare for far¬ 
rowing. Where 
a herd of a 
dozen or more 
breeding sows 
are kept, all 
looking pretty 
much alike, it 
would be some¬ 
times difficult 
to distinguish 
the different individuals, without some way of desig¬ 
nating them. We use the triangular hog rings, that 
are inserted in the nose by means of a special tool 
furnished with them, resembling a pair of pliers. 
These are apt to get lost from the nose frequently, 
and are not to be depended on as markers. By in¬ 
serting them in the ear, however, they make very 
good markers, and none has been lost out so far. By 
