1911- 
HENS ON A DAIRY FARM. 
Ours is a rather large dairy farm, 
with the usual chronic condition of too 
much work and too little help, so my 
hens have had as little time spent for 
them as possible, not more than an 
average of one hour per day, and I 
generally feed them and gather the eggs 
myself. The men clean the roost plat¬ 
forms and the floors every two or three 
months, and the manure is certainly 
worth the time they spend. I feed a 
mixture of cracked corn and whole 
wheat in the proportion of 200 pounds 
of cracked corn to 100 pounds of wheat. 
I believe 200 of wheat to 100 of corn 
is a better ration, but have not the 
courage of my convictions with wheat 
$2 per 100 and corn $1.40. This mix- 
tme is fed in a hopper similar to that 
illustrated in The R. N.-Y., April 30, 
1910. I feed, night and morning, what 
they will eat up quickly. I have not 
found it feasible to keep feed by them 
on account of rats and English spar¬ 
rows. My fowls have'free range, and 
I keep daily replenished a dish of meat 
scrap, for which I pay $2.70 per 100, 
and another of shells, at 75 cents per 
100. In Winter, when we often have 
weeks of snow which confines the hens 
in their house, I carry them a pail of 
gravelly sand every two or three days, 
and also add a handful of charcoal to 
their dish of shells. I feed all the cull 
cabbages, beets or apples I can get hold 
of. When there is no outside green 
feed I mean to feed the equivalent of 
one cabbage to 24 fowls every other 
day. I have fed some silage when out 
of other succulent feed. I tried sprout¬ 
ing oats, and if one had a flock of 10 
hens, or less, it would be a useful addi¬ 
tion to their Winter feed, but for any 
larger flock would require a greenhouse 
for light and heat. The oats are beau¬ 
tiful growmg in Winter, and the hens 
eat them very eagerly. My hens also 
receive one quart of skim-milk daily 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
(worth, according to Mr. Ives’ ac¬ 
count one-fourth cent for pig feeding), 
and I give them fresh water every 
morning. I hey have some waste scraps 
from butchering times, and a few table 
scraps; very few of the latter, as we 
keep a collie dog. In the four years I 
have lost only 12 hens from sickness, 
and six of these died the second Sum¬ 
mer from lack of ventilation in their 
roosting place, as I lost no more when 
t lett their door open at night. I have 
never had very good hatches of chicks, 
and not much success in raising what 
did hatch, though none has died from 
sickness since I learned to put fresh 
gravel by the coops every day while 
they were under two months old. I 
feed a ‘ chick feed” mixture to the little 
chicks until large enough to eat the 
. cracked corn and wheat. Rats, crows, 
hawks and foxes are their chief foes! 
In the following account the cracked 
corn, wheat, meat scrap, shells and 
chick feed are what are accounted the 
cost of feed, and the eggs, fowls and 
broilers in what I received from the 
flock. What were used by ourselves 
were credited in the account at the 
same prices received for those sold in 
our local market. All fowls and broil¬ 
ers were sold alive, as I have no spare 
time to dress fowls for market. 
About the middle of April, 1907, I re¬ 
ceived a present of two Barred Ply¬ 
mouth Rock hens and a cock, and I 
bought four more hens (of the same 
breed), as it would be no more work to 
care for seven. Our barn and adjoin¬ 
ing sheds and henhouse were burned 
the previous Summer, so I housed my 
seven biddies in a shanty the size of a 
piano box. They were soon clucking, 
and I let them have eggs to sit on, all 
they wanted to, until the latter part of 
July. At the end of the year (April, 
1908,) I had four old hens, 20 yearling 
hens, of my own raising, also two 
cocks, and had received from the flock, 
in eggs, etc., $5 more than the cost of 
feed. In the Fall of 1907 the increased 
flock needed a larger roosting place, 
and I had a slab and felt paper shanty 
built, at a cost of $10 for labor and ma¬ 
terial. As an item of that year I set 11 
dozen of eggs, hatched 65; and of these 
raised 20 pullets, the cockerels being 
sold when they weighed 2y> pounds 
alive. . . 
From April 1, 1908, to April 1, 1909, 
feed cost $38.92; received for eggs, 
fowls and broilers $79.03, and had a 
flock of 30 hens and two cocks at the 
end of the year. From April 1, 1909, to 
April 1, 1910, feed cost $60.82, and re¬ 
ceived from flock $160.75. That year I 
set 12 dozen eggs and hatched 80, but 
had so poor luck with my chicks (the 
rats got most of them) that I bought 
30 partly grown ones, for which I paid 
$11.40. That year they built me a nice 
henhouse, with a cement floor to keep 
out rats. This building is 30 feet long, 
12 feet wide, ly 2 feet high in front, 4 y 2 
feet in rear, and nine feet at ridge, with 
a passage 4J4 .feet wide across the cen¬ 
ter, making two pens capable of com¬ 
fortably housing 30 fowls in each. Each 
pen has two single sash windows, two 
feet from the floor, and the house 
fronts the south, an important item in 
this, latitude. A double compartment 
grain bin, with lid, is at rear of center 
passage. Besides the windows, which 
are kept open in Summer, each pen has 
three muslin covered openings the size 
of ordinary windo / sash. The roosts 
have droppings boards beneath. The 
nests are in a line, and open into pass¬ 
age with a hinged lid. The partition 
above nests is of wire. The nests have 
a groove on each side so that the rear 
board can be slid in front of nest and 
leave a sitting hen with exit on pass¬ 
ageway. The nests measure inside lOx 
10x12 inches, and are too small for so 
large hens; also they are only eight 
inches from floor, which height rather 
encourages egg eating, so are not satis¬ 
factory, and I shall have them re¬ 
modeled a little larger and at least 18 
inches from floor. I cannot give the 
cost of this building, as it was all Sum¬ 
mer getting built (whenever anyone had 
time to work on it), and of odds and 
elds of material, but it is covered with 
matched stuff, is painted, and looks 
pretty slick. But those rats gnawed in 
under the nests, and eight of them took 
up their abode there. Since we “outed 
them out it has taken one qua r day 
less grain to feed the flock c: ... hens 
all they will eat, which makes anyone 
take notice how much it costs to feed 
rats. We use traps and poison freely, 
but do not get rid of them. Once the 
hens and building became badly in¬ 
fested with red mites (the first I had 
ever seen), but two thorough cleanings 
(with a two weeks’ interval), after each 
of which the roosts, nests and entire in¬ 
side of building were very thoroughly 
sprinkled with kerosene, served to free 
them of that pest. 
April 1, 1910, found the flock num¬ 
bering 19 two-year-old and 26 yearling 
Barred Plymouth Rock hens and one 
cock, and 13 yearling Rhode Island Red 
hens and one cock, in all 60 fowls. 
From that date until April 1, 1911, the 
feed cost $73.89, and received from 
flock $239.78, of which $205.06 was for 
eggs, and $34.72 for fowls and broil¬ 
ers. April 1, 1911, the flock numbers 50 
fowls, viz., 19 yearling hens, two year¬ 
ling cocks, and 29 hens two years old. 
As I said in beginning, this isn’t a big 
story, its only merit being that it is 
true, and shows that poultry keeping in 
a small way is a fairly satisfactory side 
issue, without any very heavy labor 
about it. 
As to breeds, the Barred Plymouth 
Rock is certainly my favorite. This last 
year I raised a few Buff Orpingtons, 
but do not like their small white eggs, 
and they lay no better than Rocks. In 
1910 I bought two sittings of Rhode Is¬ 
land Red eggs from a friend whose 
R. I. Reds laid twice as well as her 
Barred Plymouth Rocks, and I raised 
13 pullets. They were big, handsome 
fowls, and T put them in one side of my 
new henhouse, and 26 Barred Ply¬ 
mouth Rock pullets in the other side. 
Of course they were cared for alike. 
The Reds were one month older than 
the Rocks, but the Rocks beean to lay 
two weeks before the Reds did. In the 
year the Rocks laid 3739 eggs, an aver¬ 
age of 143 eggs per hen, while the Reds 
laid 1679, an average of 129 eggs per 
hen. Moreover, 'the Rocks laid much 
better than the Reds in November and 
December, when eggs sold readily for 
40 to 45 cents per dozen, while the Reds 
laid best from March to July when eggs 
were 25 to 35 cents per dozen. So that 
the eggs from the Plymouth Rock hens 
brought $106.69, an average of $4.10 
per hen, while those from the Rhode 
Island. Reds brought $47.90, an aver¬ 
age of $3.53 per hen. Furthermore, un¬ 
der my management hens over one year 
old do not lay eggs enough to pay for 
their feed, and I shall keep no more 
through their second Winter, except a 
selected few to lay eggs for the Spring 
settings. . mrs, f. l. ives. 
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