Vol. LXII1. No. 2838. 
NEW YORK, JUNE 18, 1904. 
81 PER YEAR 
TALKS WITH A HEN MAN . 
A Successful White Leghorn Farm. 
PART I. 
MIXED GRAIN.—At five o’clock in the morning 
Mr. F. Q. White, of White & Rice, was out in the 
orchard feeding his Leghorns. A stranger, looking 
from a distance, would have thought Mr. White was 
sowing clover or grain. He carried a basket of corn, 
oats and wheat mixed, and walked briskly along among 
the apple trees, scattering the grain in the grass. 
Where a man has 1,000 laying hens and 1,600 little 
chicks to feed he certainly cannot give special atten¬ 
tion to each one. The beautiful White Leghorns did 
not need it. They ran after their breakfast, following 
the seed sower along the rows of trees. Two hours 
later I found some of the hens still at work hunting 
in the grass for any stray grain that might have 
escaped other sharp eyes. They scratched and hunted, 
nibbled at the grass, and roamed about as happy as a 
hen ought to be. 
“Why do you feed a mix¬ 
ture of grains?” I asked. 
“For several reasons. 
While hens prefer corn to 
any other single grain they 
will get tired of it—some 
sooner than others. I have 
known corn to lie on the 
ground uneaten when if you 
threw wheat or oats down 
those grains would be eaten 
at once. All hens do not 
have the same tastes. Limit 
them to one single grain and 
some will not eat enough. 
Give them a mixture and all 
will find what they want. 
A hen will eat corn one 
day, oats another and wheat 
another, and so on.” 
“Comparatively few hen 
men feed oats except to 
young chickens. I have 
heard it said that hens have 
been hurt by eating whole 
oats.” 
“We feed lots of them, 
and have had no trouble. 
The only objection is that 
they cost too much. We 
have had good results from 
feeding oats. One year we 
had a field of oats near the 
henhouses. The hens ran out in the field and picked 
up a good deal of grain. They never did better, and 
kept up their laying through the late Summer. We all 
know that something about oats gives ‘spirit’ or good 
feeling to a horse. Why not to a hen?” 
“Would you not rather have them crushed and fed 
in a mash?” 
“No, the whole grain is better as it is for a horse. 
We do not get as good results in a driving horse on 
oatmeal as we do from whole oats.” 
MASH MATTERS.—“Why not feed whole, dry 
grain entirely, then?” 
“We feed part of the hens’ ration in a mash. I think 
a laying hen needs part of her food at least in a very 
available form. It pays us to do part of the grinding 
for her. The mash also gives us a chance to feed meat 
in the best way to be sure that all the hens get their 
share. Meat in some form is necessary when the hen 
is laying hard.” 
“Why not feed all mash, then?” 
“It would make the hen lazy. She would fill up on 
soft food and grow dumpy in time. The work of 
grinding her own grain and working for each kernel of 
it is the best thing for the hen. Make her work!” 
The apple orchard where these Leghorns are fed is a 
great monument to the value of hen pasturing. The 
trees are strong and vigorous, and yield- large crops of 
fine fruit with no cultivation other than what the hens 
give. In part of this orchard the hens have eaten the 
grass all off, and are now working back into other por¬ 
tions. Two years ago I saw this orchard in August. 
At that time it was very easy to tell from the appear¬ 
ance of the trees just how far the hens ranged after 
food. The foliage and the fruit were both larger and 
finer where the hens. congregated. No wonder Mr. 
White says that an enclosed apple orchard is an ideal 
place for a flock of hens. In the yards where the little 
chickens run plum trees are planted. Mr. White likes 
plum better than peach for such planting, for the plum 
tree can stand more fertilizing and forcing. 
LITTLE CHICKS.—I asked Mr. White where the 
beginner with poultry would be most likely to fail and 
become discouraged. After some thought he replied: 
“He will be most likely to fail in raising the little 
chicks, while lice among the hens will make his results 
discouraging. With the best of us even after long years 
of experience the little chicks will often die off. Many 
beginners forget that when the little chick leaves the 
incubator his organs are ready except that he has no 
‘grit’ or sharp little stones in his gizzard. If this grit 
is not provided of course the chick cannot thrive. Most 
of the deaths among little chicks are due to poor feeding 
and lice, or sudden changes of temperature. When 
chicks ‘paste’ or clog up behind the trouble is often 
caused by feeding sour feed, or too much mash. The 
practice of leaving food in the troughs over 10 minutes 
is bad, and often causes this ‘pasted vent.’ Breeders 
sometimes try to soak this off in warm water and change 
the feeding, but it is better to avoid too much mash. 
Very likely if the mixture of grains and meat which 
make the mash were baked into a hard cake and crum¬ 
bled up for dry feeding the chick would be better off.” 
Mr. White uses the colony plan of brooder houses. 
He does not like the larger brooder house. His houses 
are scattered about the plum orchard. Each contains 
a brooder and no other fixtures. Lleat enough is kept 
up to warm the entire house, so that the. chicks rarely 
stay for any length of time under the hover. He 
formerly used kerosene lamps to heat his brooders, but 
he now uses gasoline burners and prefers them. A small 
can of gasoline stands over the back of each house with 
a pipe running from it down to a burner, which is 
placed under the brooder where the lamp usually is. 
The flame can be regulated so as to give just the heat 
required, and there is no trouble about turning wicks 
or filling small lamps. Mr. White says he burned up 
one house in learning how to handle these burners, but 
is now greatly pleased with them. On pleasant days 
they run out on the grass. As they grow large enough 
the brooders are taken out of the house and low roosts 
are put in, so that the chicks remain in the house until 
they are put into Winter quarters. It was a pleasure 
to see these bright-eyed, thrifty little Leghorns running 
about. Mr. White says that the Leghorns have more 
brains and “sense” than any other breed. Birds of 
some of the larger breeds actually do not know enough 
“to go into the house when it rains.” They will stand 
outside the brooders and cry right at the door, while 
Leghorns of the same age 
would run inside when they 
needed shelter. Mr. White 
can tell another how to 
build a house, but not how 
to breed and raise such 
bright-eyed little birds, be¬ 
cause every one of them car¬ 
ries a share of his long and 
well-bought experience, and 
the hen alone teaches this. 
KILLING LICE.—As for 
hen lice, very few are per¬ 
mitted in Mr. White’s 
houses. The hens have every 
chance to dust and clean 
themselves, and the houses 
are fixed so that lice cannot 
live there. On many farms 
at this season the henhouses 
begin to swarm with mites. 
The hen has the strongest 
home instinct of any living 
creature when she is willing 
to go back and pass the 
night in one of these “mity” 
houses. A Light Brahma 
hen can get up an inclina¬ 
tion to sit that is what we 
may call enduring, but these 
terrible chicken mites have 
been known to drive her 
from the eggs or kill her at 
her post. After trying various washes and sprays 
Mr. White has found that the lime and sulphur wash 
with caustic soda does the job perfectly. This is the 
same wash that is used for killing the San Jose scale. 
It has been used with success in Mr. White’s orchard, 
and he reasoned that if it can bite hard enough to kill 
the scale insect through its shell it will end the chicken 
mite if it only hits him. As used for orchard spraying 
40 pounds of lime and 20 of ground sulphur go with 
60 gallons of water. The lime is slaked in a barrel or 
hogshead. The sulphur is mixed with water into a thin 
paste, and stirred quickly into the slaking lime water. 
Then five pounds of caustic soda, dissolved in water, 
are stirred in and more water added. This makes a 
great boiling and bubbling, and gives a reddish- 
brown mixture, which when the full amount of water is 
added can be sprayed through an ordinary nozzle. The 
way Mr. White does it is to drive the spraying outfit 
up to the house, take the hose and nozzle inside, and 
thoroughly spray the whole interior. It could if need 
be swabbed on with an old brush or broom. No insect 
or disease germ can live after contact with this biting 
mixture. It will sting or eat the flesh when sprayed 
ASTER AMELLUS BESSARABICUS. Fig. 204. See Ruralisms, Page 478. 
