638 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
September 25 
HOPE FARM NOTES. 
SOMETHING ABOUT THE POULTRY. 
A few weeks ago, I said that we ex¬ 
pected to put 15 of our best black pul¬ 
lets with a good Brown Leghorn rooster 
for a breeding pen from which to raise 
next year’s pullets. At least a dozen 
good poultry men have urged us not to 
use the Brown Leghorn. Here is a note 
from Florida that might serve as a text 
for a number of poultry sermons : 
On page 558, H. W. C. admits that his Black 
Minorcas are grand layers. Why he should de¬ 
cide to cross them with Brown Leghorns is a 
mystery to me. Why not let well enough alone 
instead of spoiling it ? I think there is no better 
way than to get purebred fowls, then keep them 
so. I have tried many kinds of fowls, and have 
settled down on the Black Minorcas as the best. 
They lay large eggs and more of them than any 
other fowl I have had, and with good stock and 
good care, make very good-sized fowls, while 
Brown Leghorns are quite small and lay a small 
egg. 
But has H. W. C. got pure Minorcas? The few 
white feathers on the wing spoken of on page 
542, are no objection, as they often have them the 
first year, but are free from them after the first 
moult. He says at the same time that “the 
original stock was from a cross between White 
and Brown Leghorns.” There is a mistake some¬ 
where, for that cross would not make a “ coal- 
black bird,” as he calls them. He complains 
that his bens lay well only in April, May and 
June. I am positive that the number of eggs a 
hen lays depends very, vert largely on the feed¬ 
ing of them. I have been governed very much in 
feeding by what P. H. Jacobs has said, one point 
of which has been to feed very little, if any, corn, 
especially in warm weather. Grain is much 
more expensive here than at the North, but corn 
has sold for a year past at $1 to $1.15 per bag of 
110 pounds. Last winter, I began to feed one- 
half corn and one-half wheat for a night feed. I 
feed morning and night only. For morning feed, 
I use in the proportion of a gallon tin of bran, a 
three-pound can of H-O hen feed, and a three- 
pound can of coarse grits—all corn, of course. I 
also put in some of Bartlett’s O. K. dried and 
ground meat and bone, and wet up with cold 
water. 
My hens have laid nearly all the time since 
they began in February. There have been two 
spells for, perhaps, 10 days, when they dropped 
off about one-half, then at it again. My hens are 
not all purebred Minorcas. I have others for 
setting, but I have a pen of nine purebred Minor- 
eas and a rooster, from which I get my eggs for 
setting, and I think the nine hens have averaged 
from five to six eggs every day from March 1, 
and such large, clear white eggs, too! 
H. W. C. says that his hens “ are too dull and 
stuoid to lay fertile eggs” in August. I will give 
my experience last spring to show that his hens 
may not be to blame. I got over 100 eggs from 
my pen of Minorcas early in the spring, and got 
four chicks, two of which died right away. I 
went about three miles, got another rooster, 
began again and got 11, 12 and 13 chicks, good 
strong ones, from each setting of 13 eggs. That 
shows where the trouble was. I hope to use the 
same hens and rooster early next season, and 
after that, get a new rooster and breed from my 
best present pullets. When my chicks are two or 
three days old, I take the shears and cut off one 
wing at the first joint, and then have no trouble 
to clip the wings after they are grown. 
A. J. ALDRICH. 
X X X 
Our Black Business birds came from 
the stock of Mr. A. Johnson, of New 
Jersey. Mr. Johnson formerly kept 
White and Brown Leghorns. One year, 
he decided to cross these breeds, expect¬ 
ing to obtain a hen larger than the 
Brown one, and laying a larger egg. A 
few of the chicks from this cross came 
black or nearly so—the others being al¬ 
most all colors. Poultrymen tell me 
that it is not at all unusual to obtain 
black birds from this cross. Mr. John¬ 
son liked the looks of tbe black birds, 
and selected about a dozen for a breed¬ 
ing pen, using a BLack Minorca rooster 
with them. Our hens are about the 
third generation of such breeding with 
Black Minorca. Our pullets have still 
another dash of Minorca blood. 
Why use a Brown Leghorn on them? 
We think that it is admitted that the 
Browns will lay more eggs inside of 12 
months than any other breed. The pul¬ 
lets of this breed will, also, start laying 
earlier in life than any other. The only 
reasonable objection to the Brown is the 
small size of its egg. The Minorcas lay 
large and beautiful eggs, but not as 
many of them as either White or Brown 
Leghorns. The pullets are late to 
mature, and Mr. Johnson found the 
Black hens slower to start in winter 
than were the Browns. My theory is 
that, by breeding Brown Leghorn blood 
into our next season’s pullets, we may 
retain the fine large egg of the Minorca 
and add the earlier maturity and egg 
capacity of the Brown. One theory is 
as good as another, and I have heard 
nothing but theory against such a 
course. We do not care how spotted 
or speckled the pullets may be if they 
lay ogqs. Of course, we will not breed 
all the pullets in this way, but it is 
worth something to take one pen and 
see what will come from such a course. 
I would not advise such breeding for 
others, and I do not know yet what the 
result will be. 
$ X X 
It is much the same way with feeding. 
For years, I have believed that, if we 
could either prepare a balanced ration 
or let the hen balance her own dinner, 
it would be safe to keep food before her 
all the time, and let her help herself. 
Last year, one of our most prominent 
poultrymen wrote as follows about it: 
I do not believe that any experienced poultry- 
man will indorse such a method, as it denotes 
that the manager is lazy and desires to save 
labor. Fowls so treated become indolent, exces¬ 
sively fat, and are subject to indigestion, en¬ 
largement of the liver, and other ailments. Many 
cases of so-called cholera may be traced to such 
manner of feeding. Fowls require bulky food as 
well as grain, and should be made to work and 
secure exercise. 
In spite of all this advice, I am ready 
to risk 100 pullets fed in this way, and 
we expect to keep a well-balanced poul¬ 
try food before them all the time. The 
first 60 have been fed in this way for 
three weeks, and they are as bright and 
lively as ever. No matter how it ends, 
we shall tell our readers the facts. The 
world is full of theory—especially the 
poultry world. Even so simple a thing 
as an egg record is seldom exact. Many 
people know how many eggs they take 
from the henhouse, but very few seem to 
know just how .many hens laid the eggs. 
As a rule, they make a guess at the num¬ 
ber, unless the pen is a small one. 
X X X 
As to what our friend says about fer¬ 
tile eggs in August, I can only say that, 
out of 60 August eggs, we hatched only 
nine Florida hens may be ready for 
business in August, but New Jersey 
hens are not—according to our experi¬ 
ence ; neither do I believe that even 
Florida roosters would remedy the 
trouble. Ido not know just when south¬ 
ern hens moult, or whether they take 
more time for it than our northern hens 
do. I would like to know more about 
such things. Speaking of southern hens 
and cross-breeding, we have this note 
from a reader in South Carolina : 
List spring, I crossed Leghorn cocks on Plym¬ 
outh Rock hens, and now have over 100 beautiful, 
half-grown pullets, most of which are jet blacks. 
Is the cross a good one, or will you name a better 
one ? 
I suppose that the Brown Leghorn is 
meant in this case. For egg production, 
in our country, I should prefer our Leg- 
horn-Minorca cross. I should expect the 
eggs from this P. Rock cross to be a pale 
mud color, certainly not suited to our 
trade. One objection to the Minorca 
crosses is the black legs. These always 
hurt the sale of market poultry. We 
took about 60 pounds of live young 
roosters to market last week, and they 
were docked two cents a pound because 
of their black legs. Most of the better 
butchers would not touch them at any 
price. _ h. w. c. 
FEEDING THE YOUNG PULLET. 
In preparing a balanced ration for 
poultry, there are several items to be 
taken into account aside from the main 
one of digestible nitrogen and carbon 
considered on page 575. The item of 
fiber or indigestible woody matter is, 
also, important. This fiber which we 
find in most articles of food, has its uses 
in the animal system, the most import¬ 
ant of which seems to be to assist the 
mechanical action of the bowels. I can 
think of no better illustration than a 
thrasher and cleaner run by a treadmill 
horse-power. It is built to clean, say a 
bushel of grain a minute. The straw 
cuts no figure in the bag of finished 
product, but it helps to steady the work¬ 
ing of the machine. If the grain has 
grown mostly to straw with little grain 
the machine will not be able to work off 
enough of the straw to produce a bushel 
of cleaned grain per minute. If, on the 
other hand, the straw has grown very 
short with well-filled heads, it will re¬ 
quire so much straw to keep the speed 
in check that the cleaner will not be 
able to clean the grain properly. With 
a normal growth of straw in proportion 
to the grain, the machine runs smoothly 
and turns out its bushel of nicely cleaned 
grain per minute. 
God could, probably, have made a hen 
to digest and assimilate pure nutriment 
just as the manufacturer could build a 
machine to thrash and clean grain that 
is all heads, but He did not, and we must 
use the hen just as we find her. Clover 
hay contains 25 per cent of this fiber, 
while corn contains only two per cent, 
and this is the main reason, I take it, 
why a little cut clover in the ration 
often helps to better results. When we 
get the balance just right, the droppings 
are soft enough to flatten out partially 
as they fall to the tables, and have that 
waxy appearance, with the white por¬ 
tion or kidney secretions spread well 
over the whole, which indicates to the 
expert that he may expect lots of eggs 
in the nests at night. 
Another point which has been but 
litt'e considered is the adaptability of 
different forms of life to convert differ¬ 
ent forms of matter into organic forms. 
We are taught that, in the beginning, 
the earth was without form and void 
Evidently, all matter was inorganic. 
Now we have vegetable life which can 
convert inorganic matter into vegetable 
matter. We, also, have animals of the 
herbivorous species which can convert 
vegetable matter into animal matter. 
Animals of the carnivorous species can 
convert animal matter into other species 
of animal matter. Those of the omniv¬ 
orous species can use either vegetable or 
animal matter to sustain life. There is 
still another form of life which converts 
animal and vegetable matter back into 
inorganic form. Without this form of 
life, dust could not return to dust. It is 
not a pleasant subject to pursue, but a 
hen seems to belong to a form of life 
which can use not only animal and vege¬ 
table matter to sustain life, but also this 
third form of matter. I am at a loss for 
a word to express the form of life to 
which she evidently belongs, but she 
surely knows what she is about when 
she is forever scratching in mother 
earth. 
Several years ago I became deeply in¬ 
terested in the subject of a balanced 
ration, and began a series of experi¬ 
ments on my large flock, which gener¬ 
ally consists of from 1,000 to 2,000, to see 
whether I could determine of what the 
proper balance consisted. During this 
experimental work, I have taken up a 
good many theories which seem to be 
generally accepted as correct, and fol¬ 
lowed them to their confusion. For ia- 
stance, the theory that we must not 
give a hen all she will eat, or she might 
(Continued on next page). 
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