I 009. 
THE; RURAL NEW-YORKER 
683 
A VETERAN HAY LOADER. 
The hay loader shown at Fig. 249 has 
been used on the farm of W. O. Hurst. 
Lorain Co., Ohio, for five years. It 
is still able to get to work, and has 
proved itself a necessity. vVhen we see 
a veteran machine of this sort we think 
of the skill of the maker and no less of 
the care of the farmer who has handled 
it at work. Some tools go to pieces in a 
few years, and frequently the manu¬ 
facturers are blamed for the failure, 
when in truth they did their part fully. 
The trouble lay in the neglect of little 
things, such as keeping nuts and bolts 
tight and straight, and all bearings well 
oiled. The man who is careful of these 
things is sure to prolong the life of his 
tools. There will be more hay loaders 
than ever before this year at work in 
hayfields. They pick up the hay and 
toss it to the wagon in a way that gives 
one man great control of a large situa¬ 
tion in the hayfield. 
MAPES, THE HEN MAN, AGAIN. 
He Champions “Dry Mash.” 
On page 509 L. R. P. throws down 
the gauntlet on the trap-nest and the 
dry-mash hopper with a vengeance. I 
shall let the one on the trap-nest lie for 
the present, but I should feel myself a 
coward to my own convictions did I 
not take up the other. I wish first to 
compliment him on the plausibility of 
his theorieSj and the skill with which he 
puts them into a readable article, and 
then wallop him with a bundle of facts. 
Older readers of The R. N.-Y. will 
bear witness of my courage in the past 
to tell of some of my failures, and give 
the readier credence to this account of 
success with the dry-mash system of 
feeding. 1 find that it is not wise to 
expect to solve new and difficult prob¬ 
lems with the first trial, and conclude 
that they are not capable of solution 
because of our own failures. The 
writer struggled for three years with 
the dry mash problem before success 
crowned his efforts.' Fourteen years of 
intense study and experimenting have 
been given to the hardest problem I 
ever tackled, that of balanced rations, 
and the two are so closely allied that 
when either is solved the other is much 
easier. There is no doubt but that 
“some strains of the older breeds have 
run out and become weakened,” as L. 
R. P. says, but when he lays the blame 
all to "too much artificial hatching and 
rearing,” I believe him to be all wrong. 
Improper feeding must bear a large 
share of the blame in such cases. 
Now for the bundle of facts. My 
own flock of S. C. White Leghorns, 
usually numbering from 1000 to 1500 
mature birds, is fairly entitled to be 
classed with those "that have been 
weakened by “too much artificial hatch¬ 
ing and rearing.” White diarrhoea 
among the chicks, often taking off over 
50 per cent of them, and roup later on. 
reducing the survivors to mere skele¬ 
tons, have had a goodly share in bring¬ 
ing about such a condition. About 
three years ago the dry mash fad 
struck me and I am free to say that 
for over two years conditions got worse 
rather than better. When a schoolboy 
i made it a boast that I never passed a 
problem until I had solved it, and this 
habit, carried into the later problems of 
life, has often kept me “pegging away” 
after some might have been discour¬ 
aged. 
My hens in the “hen barn,” for in¬ 
stance, have had “a hopper of feed star¬ 
ing them in the face” ever since they 
were placed in it, nearly three years 
ago, yet, when I go in among them at 
feeding time with a pail of grain I have 
to “duck my head” until I can scatter 
the first measure of the grain, to keep 
them from scratching my eyes out as 
they take wing and try to alight on my 
head and shoulders. "My other smaller 
flocks in the colony houses are equally 
ravenous. Each of these colony houses 
has a small grain bin holding a bag of 
grain, and it is really dangerous to 
stoop and dip a basin of corn from the 
bottom. Some of those “weakened 
birds” are apt to make a grab for your 
ear or nose, or peck your eye. I come 
to the house so often with a raw spot 
or scab on some part of mv face that 
my wife says I am literally “hen¬ 
pecked” at last. 
It was not always so. Oh, no! The 
contents of that “hopper of feed” have 
been changed again and again and re¬ 
sults carefully studied and compared. 
Most of the time for over two years I 
had trouble to get the hens to come 
downstairs at feeding time. Often I 
had to carry part of the grain upstairs 
and fairly coax them to get down from 
the perches and eat a little of it. Dry 
mash is all right, but the dry mash 
they were getting was all wrong. L. R. 
P. admits “it is easy—too easy," and if 
he could come and follow me for an 
hour some afternoon from four to five 
o’clock, I think he would say it is also 
"profitable.” 1 could convince him that 
with the proper bulk and nutrients in 
the "hopper of feed” all that is neces¬ 
sary is to throw them about a pound 
of corn once a day for each 12 liens 
(Leghorns), and it makes little differ¬ 
ence what time of day it is done, so 
long as it is done regularly at the 
same time. Starting out at 4 P. M., we 
will go to the “hen barn" first and scat¬ 
ter their corn as quickly as possible so 
as to give all an equal chance to get 
their share. No need to take any up¬ 
stairs and coax them from the perches. 
Every head is red, and every head is 
erect, with an eye on the corn in my 
pail. We then gather the eggs from 
the nests and carry them to the house. 
We are sure to have over 50 per cent, 
though these hens have started on their 
fourth j - ear, most of their lives being 
fairly classed as "weakened and run¬ 
down.” Next we will take our baskets 
and visit the colony houses, which con¬ 
tain mostly from 40 to 50 hens each. 
All we have to do here is to pick up 
the eggs and carry them to the house. 
These hens had their daily allowance of 
whole corn thrown to them in the 
morning, before the doors were opened. 
The chief objection to the colony 
plan with me heretofore has been the 
impossibility to feed intelligently, after 
hens are let out for the day, on account 
of their following the feeder about 
from house to house. This objection 
was serious, both when feeding wet 
mash and when giving whole grain, 
either at noon or at night. With the 
hopper of dry mash, and whole corn 
only once every 24 hours, in the morn¬ 
ing before the doors are opened, all 
such difficulty is avoided. Some of my 
colonics contain last year's pullets, 
some/ two-year-old hens, and some 
older than those in the “hen barn.” 
We will find but little difference in 
the contents of the nests; what 
difference there is will be in favor of 
the younger hens. No. 10 contains 57 
one-year-old hens, and yesterday they 
laid 43 eggs. No. 19 contains 37 two- 
year-old hens, and their hopper of dry 
mash is suspended on scales for pur¬ 
poses of study. Yesterdav they ate 
three pounds eight ounces of dry mash, 
I gave them in the morning three 
pounds two ounces of corn and they 
laid 25 eggs, which is about their 
usual average. P»y five P. M. we shall 
have the job done, and from about 1140 
hens 1 will have 600 eggs. The time 
spent in locking up at night, and open¬ 
ing up and serving out the corn in the 
colony houses in the morning, amounts 
to about another hour. Market quota¬ 
tions in New York to-day for white 
eggs are 25 cents per dozen, and our 
germless eggs sell for a nice premium 
above that. Those who are so inclined, 
can do their own figuring as to whether 
or not dry mash feeding is “profitable,” 
but bear in mind that this “bundle of 
facts” concerns a flock fairly entitled to 
be classed as “weakened* and run out.” 
Does a pound of corn to each 12 hens 
once a day satisfy the hens’ appetites? 
Not by any means. They are appar¬ 
ently as hungry after they “gobble it 
down” as before. Should 1 satisfy their 
appetite with corn even once a day, the 
dry mash they would consume would 
not make a balanced ration, and the 
same old trouble of coaxing them from 
the perches, with irregular egg yield, 
would result. I quite agree with L. R. 
P. as to the desirability of “vigor” in 
the breeding pen. A year ago T had a 
cockerel that had a superabundance of 
“vigor.” I could not go near him but 
what he was always ready for a “scrap” 
with me. In walking through his yard 
I had to keep my eye always upon him. 
He was always ready to strut up be¬ 
hind me and “make a strike” with his 
spurs, and lie generally hit me above 
the knee. He was a fairly good speci¬ 
men of a show-bird and I mated him 
with five of my best hens, hen-hatching 
and raising the eggs, for my supply of 
male birds for this season. Cockerels 
from this mating weighed five pounds 
each at five months of age, and the 
pullets were not far behind them. Give 
us “vigor” by all means, but please do 
not lay the want of it to dry mash, 
whatever you do about the trap-nests. 
O. W. MAPES. 
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U.S. 
1909 
OUR 
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YOUR 
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44 
WILDERS 
WHIRLWIND 
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FILLER 
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