VoL. LX. No. 2696. 
NEW YORK, SEPTEMBER 28, 1901. 
$1 PKR YEAR. 
THE HEN AS A MANUFACTURER. 
WHY SHE BEATS OTHER ANIMALS. 
Making Bones Fif Her Teeth. 
The hen is a small body—a few pounds of fuss 
framed in feathers. We consider her as an individual, 
and conclude that the henhouse is only a side show 
hardly worthy a place in the solid exhibits of agri¬ 
culture. That is where many of us make a great mis¬ 
take. Five years ago the American hen and her year¬ 
ly product represented a value of $290,000,000. The 
agricultural statistics for the last census have not yet 
been verified, but it is safe to say that ihe year’s value 
of poultry and eggs for 1900 was $350,000,000! The 
yearly value of the crop that passes through the hen’s 
crop will run a close race with the total wheat crop, 
and probably exceed every other plant-grown farm 
crop except corn, hay and apples. This vasi'^^ total value 
is only one side of the matter, 411 living things from 
a tree to a tree toad are 
manufacturers, which 
take crude or organized 
forms of matter, and 
make them over into new 
forms more or less suit¬ 
able to man’s use. It is 
the plant or animal that 
gives the widest margin 
of profit between what it 
consumes and what it 
produces that pays best 
on the farm. Some farm¬ 
ers have persisted in 
raising wheat or fatten¬ 
ing cattle until they fin¬ 
al 1 y manufactured a 
mortgage. The trouble 
was that wheat and steer 
gave no margin, since 
their food cost more than 
it could bring as grain or 
meat. Other farmers 
learned that by growing 
cow peas, clover and Al¬ 
falfa they could cheapen 
the cost of feeding the 
wheat and the steer, and 
thus have the mortgage 
on Neighbor Brown’s 
farm instead of on their 
own. Some crops may 
be easily adapted to such 
a change of feeding, and 
in times of depression 
will utilize what were 
formerly classed as 
wastes. The hen crop is 
one of the best examples 
of ithis class. Take a 
bushel of wheat; with a hen at fair range the 60 
pounds of wheat will provide a fair grain ra¬ 
tion for at least 300 days. The hen might use 
more grain to advantage, but we know from experi¬ 
ence that 3% ounces of wheat per day will keep 
the machine busy. The number of eggs obtained 
from the wheat will, of course, be determined largely 
by the breed and character of the hen, but even with 
a record of 75 eggs for the 300 days the hen will give 
better returns than any other farm animal. Feed the 
bushel of wheat to a cow, and get the value of the 
milk and butter resulting from it, or to a hog, and 
see how much pork he makes! In nine cases out of 
10 you will find that the hen has paid a better price 
for the wheat than any of her competitors—including 
the miller. One reason for this is the fact that the 
egg is largely composed of water and lime—^two sub¬ 
stances which cost little or nothing. When man puts 
sand in his sugar, sawdust in his coffee and plaster 
in his flour we fine him if we can catch him at it! 
When the cow imitates the milkman and puts more 
water than the law allows into her milk we beef her, 
and deny her the hope of posterity. We find no fault 
with the hen when she packs the water inside her 
shell. In fact, it is as a packer that she excels, for 
she can put more culls into her basket and nave them 
turn out good fruit than any other worker on the 
farm. She will take a bug, a worm, a blade of grass, 
a weed seed, a piece of bone and a few kernels of 
grain, and within 36 hours make them into an egg—■ 
its shell enclosing not only that which will nourish 
and sustain human life, but also the promised life of 
another hen. There can be no doubt that the hen not 
only contributes a vast sum to our National wealth, 
but that she can turn cheap and easily-obtained 
wastes rapidly into human food. In this respect she 
stands at the head of all domestic animals—rivaling 
even the bee in such economy. 
Why dwell upon this thought? Because modern 
agriculture is based upon the profitable use of wastes. 
For 30 years or more the virgin prairie or whodland 
glories in its strength, and scorns the gift of plant 
food. Man moves his barn rather than move the ma¬ 
nure pile, throws wood ashes or cotton seed into the 
river, and drains the barnyard into the creek. In half 
a century he ^will squander the bank account which a 
dozen centuries slowly piled up in his soil. He begins 
at last to use manure when Nature knocks on the bot¬ 
tom of the barrel, and ends by scouring the earth for 
waste materials. These wastes are usually food or 
fuel for man or beast, which Nature has locked up 
into insoluble forms, as though wishing to hold them 
until man could realize their need and devise some 
scheme for unlocking the food. As an illustration let 
us take bones. In the tough, hard animal frame Na¬ 
ture locked phosphoric acid, lime and nitrogen, but 
turned the key so that the teeth of man or plant could 
barely scrape the outside. For many years men 
burned the bones into ash which would feed their 
crops. This was wasting a waste, for the fire drove 
away the nitrogen and made the phosphoric acid 
nearly insoluble. Finally Liebig discovered the plan 
of dissolving the bones in sulphuric acid. When this 
was done the phosphates became available for feed¬ 
ing plants. With a ton of large bones buried in a 
single acre the wheat might languish and make bare¬ 
ly a bushel of grain. When these same bones were 
cut with the acid and spread over five acres the wheat 
filled the granary, because the chemist had learned 
how to make that waste product into available 
food for plants. 
We speak of the bones and the wheat because the 
American manufacturer has done much the same 
thing for the hen. The modern green bone cutter is 
changing the whole as¬ 
pect of hen feeding, just 
as the making of super¬ 
phosphates gave the old¬ 
er farming sections a 
chance to compete with 
the virgin soils of the 
West. The pictures on 
this page show the point 
clearly. For many years 
hen-keepers have known 
the value of bones as 
food for poultry. The 
strongest and most con¬ 
centrated portion of the 
animal, of course they 
were useful in the pro¬ 
duction • of an egg. 
What could be better 
for a hen’s food, provid¬ 
ed you can make it fit a 
hen’s teeth? People 
baked them, pounded 
them in mortars, or with 
ax and hammer on a 
log, and ground the dry 
bones in mills. These 
methods were never 
fully satisfactory. The 
hen looked wistfully at 
the pile of big bones, 
and charged the farmer 
a higher price for her 
eggs than she wanted to 
until Uncle Sam took 
out his knife and began 
to chop little slices off 
the bone. The oone cut¬ 
ter does not attempt to 
grind or crush the bone 
—it slices or gouges, making pieces that create no 
dentist’s bill for the hen. This machine does for the 
hen what sulphuric acid does for the wheat, and gives 
the hen man a chance to cheapen his hen ration and, 
as one man puts it, “feed bugs and worms in Win¬ 
ter!’’ Many a farm animal that would, in former 
years, have been hauled off to the swamp for the dogs 
to fight over is now cut up into food for hens and 
hogs. In some places the introduction of bone cut¬ 
ters has created a new value for bones—making such 
a demand that it is impossible to buy a supply at a 
fair price. W'e recognize fully the great value of cut 
bone as poultry food. Nothing could be better to bal¬ 
ance a ration consisting largely of corn. A farmer 
should, however, use good judgment about it. We 
would not advise every farmer to buy a wood-burn¬ 
ing stove, though we use one ourselves, and find it 
very economical. In many localities wood is scarce 
UNCLE SAM PICKS A BONE WITH THE AMERICAN HEN. PiQ. 292. 
