V'/ ZZE 
PHOTO ENG/CO 
NEW YORK, JANUARY 18, 1896 
$1.00 PER YEAR. 
MAPES TALKS “HENS BY THE ACRE.” 
FIGHTING ROUP AT WHOLESALE. 
“A Balanced Ration” as Poultry Medicine. 
“Hens by the acre!” some one will say. “That 
sounds familiar. Why, this must be that lazy crank 
who was going to turn his hens out to grass, and do 
most of the work of taking care of them by pressing 
the button.” If you will substitute the words “ part 
of the work” for “most of the work,” I won’t quarrel 
with you about the rest. 
The fact is, as The R. N.-Y. has told, that I have 
some stony, dry pasture land, such as some are util¬ 
izing for chestnut culture, and it occurred to me a few 
years ago that it could be used for hen pasture to 
good advantage, and be made more profitable than 
for grazing cattle or sheep. The idea was to colonize 
the hens on these fields by putting up small houses 
far enough apart so that each colony would recognize 
its own home, thus securing unlimited range, and 
avoid the expense of building and maintaining a yard 
or run for each flock. 
Carrying out this idea, the first move was to build 
and stock a trial house eight rods distant from my old 
henhouse which 
was near the 
barn, in order to 
see whether 
they would “ go 
home to roost,” 
or drift back to 
the larger house 
near the barn. 
They were in¬ 
clined to meet 
me half way 
when I went to 
give them their 
supper, and to 
prevent their 
massing t o - 
gether in one 
large flock, I ar¬ 
ranged the elec¬ 
tric feed boxes 
by means of 
which I could 
scatter the grain 
on the floor of 
each of the 
houses simul¬ 
taneously with¬ 
out their seeing me. In this wav, I succeeded in keep¬ 
ing each colony to its own home, and I soon found 
that I could close the little door by which the hens 
entered the house, in the same manner, and save a 
trip to the henneries after dark. 
This was in the summer of 1802. I wintered 300 
hens that winter, and after satisfying myself that 
each colony would keep to its own house, and lay the 
eggs inside the houses instead of scattering them 
about the fields, I prepared to double ray accommoda¬ 
tions, and raise enough hens to fill the new houses. 
This programme was carried out successfully, and the 
winter of 1893-94 found us with 600 hens quartered in 
15 houses, averaging 40 in each flock. The hens laid 
equally as well as when we had only one flock. The 
demand for guaranteed eggs was apparently limit¬ 
less, and we found that one attendant could easily 
care for more hens; so we decided to double our 
capacity again, and watch results. 
Accordingly, in the spring of 1894. we began setting 
hens and building more houses. Here let me jump 
ahead nearly two years and show what we have to¬ 
day- Fig. 14 shows a general view of the farm with 
21 of the 35 little houses in sight. Fig-. 15 shows a 
single house with its flock of seven-months pullets 
that are laying about 20 eggs a day now (December 
31). The window is shown wide open, as it was a 
pleasant day and the hens were let out. On sunny 
days, when it is fit for them to use an open shed, the 
window is thrown wide open, allowing the sun to 
shine directly on the dust box, so that the hens 
have nearly all the advantages of an open shed 
without the expense. The buildings face south. 
The window is partially closed at night according to 
the condition of the weather. It is never wholly 
closed unless there is likely to be zero weather before 
morning. 
Acres of Roup. —Things went on swimmingly in 1894, 
and by July we had 30 houses built, all connected on 
one electric circuit, and working successfully with a 
battery of 30 cells, one for each house. We also had 
over a thousand young chicks growing, all hatched by 
hens. About this time, I discovered that I was off 
the track. I could not tell where I had gone off, or 
how to get back on, but the yield of eggs from the 
hens was falling off decidedly, and the young chickens 
began to die in large numbers. I did not discover 
what was the matter until the latter part of August. 
We were catching some cockerels one evening in order 
to separate them from the pullets, when one of the 
boys said, 
“ Papa, there is something in this box of chickens 
that smells bad.” 
A little examination soon established the fact that 
the stench proceeded out of the nostrils of those 
chickens. I had often heard and read about roup, but 
had never actually run across it before, so as to recog¬ 
nize it. Horrors ! Here was a situation, indeed ! A 
hasty examination of the surrounding houses revealed 
the fact that it was thoroughly seated in most of 
them. The battle was evidently on. The more I in¬ 
quired about the disease from those who had had ex¬ 
perience, the more desperate the situation appeared. 
Where did it come from ? I could not tell. I could 
trace back from this point, and remember finding 
half-grown chickens dead or dying with swollen heads 
and cheesy eyes, which were probably thrown over 
the fence, or partially buried under a stone. Going 
further back, I remembered finding chicks dead and 
dying with the same symptoms. Still further back, I 
see some of the hens which hatched and brooded the 
chicks, with wet noses and a feather glued to the 
nostril by the dried discharge. These hens were 
Plymouth Rocks, and came from an old hennery with 
earth floor and a leaky roof which the spring rains 
had completely saturated before I put on a new roof. 
As nearly as I can give it, there is the history of the 
disease up to the time of discovery. 
What Was to be Done ?—Common sense suggested, 
Clean the houses, and dust dry airslaked lime every¬ 
where. That was simple and safe, and was one of 
the first moves in the campaign. Advice soon began 
to pour in, which included spongia, carbolic acid, 
turpentine, kerosene, ginger, condition powders, 
patent roup cures, etc. The advice most often met by 
those who had been through the mill, was to kill off 
every bird on the place, and take a new start. This 
was heroic treatment, and as 1 had learned by this 
time that the disease was not swiftly fatal, I con¬ 
cluded to wait and watch. I began trying the various 
cures above recommended with uniform failure as far 
as the cures went. Some cases got well, and some 
did not. I think fully as large a percentage recovered 
where no medicine was used, as otherwise. 
In one case, I sent half way across the continent for 
a bottle of sure roup cure, and selected a fine P. Rock 
rooster with the determination to cure him or perish. 
This was in cold weather, so I made a nice, warm coop, 
and kept him in 
by the kitchen 
fire night and 
day. He proved 
an obdurate 
case, and after 
three weeks I 
gave him up in 
disgust and 
wrung his neck. 
Many an hour 
during evenings 
did we spend 
sorting out the 
affected birds 
from the well 
ones, and doctor¬ 
ing them, only 
to find at the 
next examina¬ 
tion, that part 
of the sick ones 
had recovered, 
and part of the 
well lot had 
contracted the 
disease, in spite 
of all our efforts 
The Roup Quarantined. —The first move I made in 
which I felt that I was gaining ground, was about 
November 1, when I shut up every bird on the farm 
inside the houses. This I reasoned would give the 
frost and snow of winter a chance to purify the land, 
and give me a pure soil to start with in the spring. I 
reasoned that the germs of the disease would not live 
in the open ground through our severe winters. A 
spring brook naturally divides the poultry land into 
two sections, with eight houses in the section nearest 
the barn, and the rest on the other side of the brook. 
I felt that I was making progress again when we had 
carried every hen across the brook and shut them in 
the houses in that section. I depended on the winter’s 
frost and snow to purify and disinfect the soil. How 
should we purify those eight empty houses ? I con¬ 
sulted my family physician who is also president of 
the Board of Health of the city of Middletown and 
should be good authority. He said “sulphur fumes, 
by all means and be generous with them.” 
After a little experiment, we found that one to two 
pounds of sulphur placed in four different pans, with 
the windows tightly closed, would give a generous 
dose in a room 10 x 12 feet by simply pouring a little 
alcohol in each pan of sulphur, and applying the match, 
“ HENS BY THE ACRE ! ” GENERAL VIEW OF THE ELECTRIC HEN FARM. Fig. 14. 
