480 
THE RURAL NEM'-YORKEH 
April 6, 
POSSIBILITIES IN EGG BUYING. 
I have bought a general store in a live 
country town, expect to make a specialty of 
paying highest prices for country produce. 
I believe that I can shorten the distance 
between producer and consumer, and elim¬ 
inate more than one middleman. My plan 
for buying eggs is this: Pay farmers one 
cent inore a dozen than the others are pay¬ 
ing, but before I will give farmers one cent 
a dozen extra these eggs must not be dirty, 
must be gathered at least once a day, and 
kept in cellar. I will grade them before 
shipment as to color; shall see that farmer 
keeps at home the odd shapes and sizes. I 
shall test all eggs before shipment, and 
keep record so I can tell which farmer is 
bringing me the eggs that are not “fresh.” 
Then when it comes to the disposing of 
these eggs, I would like to market them in 
Pittsburg, Pa., or Buffalo, N. Y., or Cleve¬ 
land, O.; would like to send them to a good, 
reliable, trustworthy commission man, who 
could help me get for them a little more 
than ordinary price. Maybe, after this plan 
had got a good start, my returns from the 
commission man would warrant me paying 
the farmer two or even three cents more 
on the dozen than he gets under the pres¬ 
ent system of “eggs is eggs.” What do you 
think of this plan? At all country stores 
In this section “butter is buttei\” The 
gilt-edge article made by one farmer is 
worth no more in price per pound than the 
worst junk made by some others. I notice 
that in the cities gilt-edge country butter 
sells on par with creamery butter. Maybe 
I can find some plan to shorten the dis¬ 
tance between producer and consumer in 
this butter business, and help the farmer 
who makes the gilt-edge article to get sev¬ 
eral cents extra on the pound. I have 
farmed long enough to realize that the 
farmer is not getting his share of the con¬ 
sumer’s dollar. s. e. r. 
Ohio. 
There are large poultry sections in 
the Central West where a specialty is 
made of collecting, sorting and shipping 
high-grade eggs, and there are also many 
individual poultry plants sending guar¬ 
anteed eggs to the cities named. These 
with the receipts from nearby poultry- 
men rather monopolize that branch of 
the market which pays a premium. S. 
E. R. would be only “a drop in the 
bucket,” but if he has the right kind of 
egg knowledge he can make the plan 
work. We have known small dealers who 
took hold of such a proposition as this 
and made it a success, but they all had 
apparently a peculiar fitness for this 
business and lots of push. It is more 
in the man than in any special method. 
Instead of long shipments , would it not 
be better to see what can be done in 
towns nearer home, like Dayton, Ohio? 
Long distance shipment eats up the 
profits with heavy expenses and railroad 
damage. _ 
A HEN STORY ANALYZED 
I notice in an article on page 210 that 
R. B. says he feeds 200 hens for about 60 
cents a day. Will you ask him to send me 
his formula for feeding, also how many 
eggs he got in January? c. A. s. 
Townsend Harbor, Mass. 
Answered in Detail. 
Cost op Feed. —Being a farmer, I natur¬ 
ally raise all the feed 1 can, and what I 
buy is often in a less finished form than 
many poultry keepers get it in; therefore 
it costs less. Consequently, the labor I put 
into getting such feed ready for the hens 
is counted as part of the labor and not the 
feed cost. For example, I raise my own 
corn, and shell it myself, and in case I 
buy it it would still be on the ear and 
not cracked or ground at mill prices. Again, 
if I get fresh bones, I have to cut them up 
for use. When it comes to green feed, I 
do not buy it by the sack, but use the chaff 
from a clover mow or pull the rye or vetch 
that 1 am using as a cover crop, which is 
either waste material or costs me very 
little. However, in my figures I will use 
where I can mill or dealer’s prices for 
small quantities of feed, such as the owner 
of a small flock would have to pay. For a 
number of years I have been keeping from 
100 to 250 hens in connection with my 
other farm work. 1 never have got at the 
cost of keeping them before, because where 
one buys feed in large lots and uses it for 
all his stock at the same time, it is quite 
a little trouble to keep track of just what 
the hens, the sheep, or the cows are getting 
separately. This Winter I made up my 
mind to put more time on my hens and find 
out if possible just what they were doing 
for me. 
Sorting the Flock. —My first move was 
to go through my flock early in December 
and pick out the loafers. Out of 175 hens 
and pullets I kept 120 for layers; the re¬ 
mainder I marketed as fast as I could get 
them fat. Of the layers, 80 were pullets , 
and the rest two-year-old hens, three- 
fourths of them being White Leghorns, the 
others birds of mixed breeding. I fed them 
whatever feeds were easiest and cheapest to 
get hold of. With slight variations, I set¬ 
tled down to the following: 
The Feed Mixture. —Whole corn fed in 
straw litter, five or six times a day, aim¬ 
ing to keep them especially busy in the 
morning. Dry mash, three quarts bran to 
one quart fine bran or brown middlings, 
fed in a hopper, which was usually filled 
in the middle of the forenoon or right after 
dinner. Beef scraps were kept before them 
all the time, but they ate very little of 
them after I commenced feeding green cut 
bone and beef scraps alternating days. 
Mixed with an equal amount of bran 1 fed 
them in a crumbly mash at about four 
o’clock in the afternoon. I was very hard 
up for green feed all through January, and 
1 believe I should have done much better 
if I had taken pains to supply more. As 
it was I gave the hens nearly every day a 
half bushel of fresh pulled rye and vetch, 
which I seeded between the garden rows in 
July. This vetch is great stuff, much like 
chickweed to handle, and richer than any 
green feed except Alfalfa. When the snow 
was too deep or the weather too rough, I 
fed them Lima bean vines that I cured in 
the garden last Fall. Next Winter I shall 
have plenty of cabbage and roots for them. 
What They Ate. —The average amount 
of feed they ate a day was as follows: 
Whole corn, eight quarts; dry mash, five 
pounds bran, 2% pounds middlings; beef 
scraps, three pounds. Figuring corn at 72 
cents a bushel, bran and middlings at $1.60 
per 100, and beef scraps at $3 (I pay 
$2.65 for the last), the cost is as follows: 
Corn, 18 cents; bran, eight cents; mid¬ 
dlings, four cents; scraps, nine cents; total, 
39 cents. When I used cut bone the cost 
for meat was six cents, making it 36 cents 
for 120 hens, or 60 cents for 200, 65 cents 
when beef scraps were used, based on the 
dealer’s figures above. If I allow five cents 
for green feed another Winter, the cost will 
be somewhat increased. 
What They Did. —As to my egg yield, 
during January I gathered from the 120 
hens 98 dozen eggs, -which I marketed as 
follows: A mile from home, six dozen at 
32 cents, 42% dozen at 35 cents, 20 dozen 
at 36 cents, 25% dozen at 42 cents, which 
together w 7 ith the four dozen used at home 
and figured at 32 cents, gave me an in¬ 
come of $36.41. The average daily yield 
for January was 38 eggs, not a very re¬ 
markable showing I admit, but enough to 
satisfy me that I can well afford to handle 
as many as 300 another year and take the 
time to attend to them right. I think the 
most valuable feed outside of the green feed 
they had was bran. About the middle of 
January, right in the midst of zero weather, 
the supply of bran at our local mills gave 
out and a week went by before I could get 
hold of any. Then hens slacked up almost 
at once, and went from 40 a day to 23 as 
the lowest until I thought the bottom was 
going to drop out. They came back very 
shortly with a new bran supply, but it left 
a sad hole in the egg record. I believe 
also that I could have culled my flock 
closer to advantage. About two weeks ago 
I picked out a breeding pen of 40 Leghorns 
from the whole bunch, and for the next 
week they averaged within five or six eggs 
of half the number laid. I am thoroughly 
convinced that it is not so much the kind 
or exact amount of feed fed that makes the 
difference as it is the care you take in feed¬ 
ing it. R. B. 
Maryland. _ 
An Improved “Elevated” House. 
On page 141 J. W. Griffin “knocks” the 
elevated poultry house. As he complains 
of drafts, lack of sunshine and dampness, 
I suppose he means a house raised a 
couple of feet and completely open below. 
Why not raise the house six feet, fill in 
eight or 10 inches with dry dirt, pipe the 
water from the roof and board it up tight 
on three sides? The above house we have 
found very satisfactory in the Willamette 
Valley, a place where it sometimes rains in 
the Winter. We have used this house with 
success two years, and have now elevated 
our one-story houses. The advantages of 
this house are many. You have double 
floor space at little extra cost. The fowls 
get exercise in going up and down stairs. 
You can keep more fowls in a house, and 
most important of all, they have their 
dust bath rain or shine. The fowls housed 
in this way seem to consider a yard as un¬ 
necessary, as they prefer to wallow in the 
dust, dig holes and then fill them, and run 
up and down stairs for fear the grain has 
been put in the litter without their knowing 
it. The only disadvantage (if properly 
constructed) is having to climb a small 
staircase. Walter upshaw. 
Oregon. 
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