730 
June i, 
Hope Farm Notes 
“Mapes the hen man” has been writing 
articles for The It. N.-Y. a good many 
years. I have been to see his farm sev¬ 
eral times and have seen his poultry plans 
mature and change. A man like Mapes 
who can write an interesting article—so 
'interesting that you can shut your eyes 
and see the thing pictured before you—is 
sure to stand for both praise and penalty. 
We have had several letters like the fol¬ 
lowing : 
“Why don’t you get more articles from 
Mapes? lie is one of the most enter¬ 
taining writers you have. lie makes 
things very clear and seems to know what 
he is talking about. A lot of others know 
about it, but they do not seem to have 
the ability to tell it.” 
Then, almost at the same time there 
will come letters like this: 
"Shut Mapes off! He is a blowhard 
and self-advertiser! I grant that he 
writes a good article, but he makes things 
too rosy and will induce a lot of people 
to go to keeping hens when they are dead 
sure to lose. He may do as he says he 
does with his hens, but he keeps changing 
his methods and makes it seem too easy!” 
That is a fair statement of what we 
get about Mapes, and right in the middle 
of the argument came a challenge from 
the “hen man” himself: 
"Come up and see what we are doing: 
Gather the eggs and feed the hens your¬ 
self. I will show you how a business 
man can care for 1,500 hens nights and 
mornings and attend to his regular job in 
addition.” 
That is what most of us would like to 
learn, so I went up into Orange Co., 
N. Y\, to see the hens. We got to the 
farm after five p. m. and it was time to 
pick the egg crop. Some people call 
Mapes a bluffer and others "the friend of 
humanity.” To me lie did not look like 
either character as he walked across the 
road to the hen colony. lie seemed like a 
plain farmer—a serious spectacled little 
man who carries about, in his head, sev¬ 
eral hard problems which he is trying to 
hatch out. 
The barn stands across the road from 
the house, and the henhouses are on the 
other side of the barnyard. We have 
given several pictures of what Mapes 
calls his “Orange County house.” You 
might call the bottom of it a big pan of 
concrete—the sides or walls turned up 
about three feet. The sills which support 
the A-shaped roof rest on these concrete 
walls. As we know, the rear part of the 
house is fitted off as a sleeping or roosting 
room. All the fixtures in the larger room 
are arranged so that the hens cannot roost 
on feed box or water trough or nests. 
They have to go into their bedroom in 
order to sleep. Mapes says he has tried 
to design a house which will enable a hen 
to do her own housework and take entire 
care of herself—as far as it is possible 
for her to do it. He ought to design a 
farmhouse where the women folks would 
have an easy time with water and food 
always on hand and no one ever late to 
meals. Some of our readers complain be¬ 
cause Mapes claims a patent on this 
house. These critics say they built 
A-shaped houses years ago. I am no 
patent lawyer and do not pretend to know 
about this. Mapes has made some state¬ 
ments about the time required in picking 
up eggs. He ber.t me; my fingers were a 
little clumsy. I dropped one egg and I 
was surprised to see Mapes throw it to 
the liens. I was brought up to believe 
that was the way to educate egg-eaters! 
It took us a little less than 10 minutes 
to pick up about 1,000 eggs and carry 
them to the packing room, where they 
were to be cleaned and crated. That 
seemed to be the whole story for tin* night 
work. Many of the hens were out o» the 
nearby meadow hunting for insects, eat¬ 
ing grass or playing. A hopper of dry 
mash in the center of each house satisfied 
them. Several of the houses are kept 
constantly closed for comparison with the 
free range system, but most of the hens 
are at large during the day. They do not 
cross the road, and though they are ac¬ 
tive White Leghorns they require less 
range than one would suppose. They do 
not seem to get very far from that hopper 
of dry mash. After supper we went out 
to find a few. industrious birds still wan¬ 
dering about, but most of them were 
TIIE reUKA-E NEW-VOH KER 
safely in their sleeping quarters. As 
there are no lice or mites in these houses 
the hens could not find a more comfort¬ 
able place. It took perhaps 10 minutes 
more to lock the doors for the night and 
see that there was water in the troughs. 
That was all for the hens—the little 
chicks make another story. 
Shortly after five in the morning 
Mapes had me out to watch the other 
end of a hen day. This time it was feed¬ 
ing the whole grain. A mixture of grain 
is kept in a barrel or small tank in each 
house. This grain is scattered through 
the deep litter which covers the floor. 
The hens were not “crazy” for it since 
they had the dry mash before them, yet 
they ran after Mapes as he threw the 
grain out and tore up the litter. When a 
hen or a hoy will work for their food you 
may feel sure that they feel the need of 
it. About 20 minutes more were con¬ 
sumed in feeding and watering the hens. 
Not much watering was required, since 
most of the hens run out where they can 
obtain water at the brook. It is an easy 
matter to give water—all you have to do 
is turn a faucet and thus open a pipe 
which runs from the barn supply. 
“And now," said Mapes, “about 50 
minutes—and that ends the day. There 
is nothing more to do until we pick up 
the eggs again at night. About once a 
week we can clean out the houses and 
see that the litter is clean—but to-day— 
no more except gathering the eggs!” 
The little chicks make a separate prop¬ 
osition. There were over 1,200 of them 
in two houses. You understand, no doubt, 
that Mapes uses the same house for chicks 
and pullets. During the Spring and Sum¬ 
mer a large flock of little chicks will be 
brooded in one of these large houses. 
Then when the young roosters are sold 
off the pullets may remain right in that 
same house for the laying season. We 
had an article on page 339 showing how 
these chicks are brooded in large flocks. 
A coal stove provides the heat for a hot- 
water radiator under a hover. We found 
the little fellows stretched out content¬ 
edly under this hot hen. The little ones 
were fed on soaked bread crumbs mixed 
with oat flakes. Mapes had a bucket of 
milk in this house with a number of 
loaves of stale bread. At night he broke 
several loaves into large pieces and 
dropped them into the milk. The next 
morning these loaves were ns soggy as a 
sponge. Mapes took them in his hands 
and squeezed the milk out about as a 
woman wrings out a mop. Then they 
crumbled up and became dry when mixed 
with the oat flakes. In another house 
the larger chicks were fed on mixed 
broken grains. But Mapes can tell how 
he does it better than I can. He is cer¬ 
tainly doing it and he claims that he is 
changing farm history besides making 
some money. “Why be the slave of a 
cow?” says Mapes, “when one man can do 
all this? If dairying does not pay—quit 
it and keep hens. Go ‘back to the land’ 
and feed the nation on eggs. I am doing 
this thing easily—why not anyone who 
has ordinary energy and sense?” That 
is about the proposition which Mapes 
puts up, and he wants to know why it is 
not sound! 
It certainly does sound right, but 
Mapes forgets one important thing—he 
has become two-thirds hen himself 
through loug association with his Leg¬ 
horns. Geo. Stanton took me into his 
garden and showed how to raise ginseng. 
I have no doubt la* grew $1,000 on an 
acre. Bight on Mapes’s farm the hired 
man, William, is handling a small herd 
of cows so they give $70 or more profit 
apiece. Mapes could not do it, nor could 
1 grow the ginseng or handle the hens 
successfully. For Mapes and Geo. Stan¬ 
ton and William have acquired that in¬ 
stinct or “second sight” which enable 
them to bridge over the gulf which most 
of us find between human and brute or 
vegetable. No man ever learns this in¬ 
stinct from b<y>ks and some men cannot 
learn it anyway. There are men who get 
this instinct through long years of labor 
and then forget that there is any such 
thing. That is why they describe their 
methods as if the whole thing were as 
easy as walking down hill. Soon they 
get to figuring that if one hen or one cow 
will make so much, 5,000 will make 5,000 
times as much. These men feel so sure 
of themselves through long practice that 
they forget all about the “law of dimin¬ 
ishing returns.” Each man has his limit 
of profitable production. The limit may 
be strength, laziness, “bulldog” or intelli¬ 
gence. The chief criticism of the “rosy” 
writers (those who are honest) is that 
they seem to forget all these limitations of 
humanity. They have worked out a plan 
which succeeds—therefore anyone can do 
it. Such attempts at logic are plausible, 
but they are, in their way, dangerous, 
when untrained men and women are on 
the edge of giving up a city job for an ex¬ 
periment. in farming. 
I think Mapes is doing just what he 
claims. I think his system of hen-keeping 
pays him. I think his house is a wonder 
for labor saving and general efficiency. 
At Hope Farm I confess that we have 
steadily lost money in poultry when we 
got above 100 birds. The trouble with us is 
that we have no one who is willing to learn 
this private language of a hen. We want 
to try one of these Mapes houses—very 
likely the hen knows more about her 
housekeeping than we do. But Mapes 
claims that one man can care for 0,000 
hens. If this includes replenishing the 
stock I doubt seriously if there are 50 
men in all this country who could do it. 
Frankly, I think it an unfortunate thing 
that a system with such evident merit, 
should be “boomed” too hard. Mapes 
seems to think that a system of this sort 
will revolutionize dairying and put fea¬ 
thers on the cows. Here again I doubt. 
When a man has milked cows all his life 
he has picked up a fixed habit, and that 
is a hard thing to shake off. I think a 
few of these houses might pay well on 
the average dairy farm, but I doubt if 
one man in 500 would give personal at¬ 
tention to the 100 unseen little things 
which enabled us to pick up 1,000 eggs in 
19 minutes. 
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l have taken all this space because this 
is a good illustration of a class of matter 
which must come up to every farm paper. 
An editor must entertain his readers and 
keep them interested. It becomes a nice 
point to know where to stop in order to 
prevent that interest from running away 
with judgment and money. In the case 
of Mtipes—he has worked out a good sys¬ 
tem which carries in it 25 years of hard 
thought and work. When he talks about 
one man and G.000 hens or of chasing the 
cow off the earth, Mapes forgets liis 25 
years of hen-keeping along this line and 
the fact that no man can hope to dupli¬ 
cate his record until he also has 25 years 
of experience and good hen blood to start 
with. H. w. c. 
“Our product is thoroughly tested be¬ 
fore leaving the factory. No man can 
sell stuff to-day that has not been 
tested.” “We manage to sell our 
product without testing it.” “That’s odd. 
What do you sell?” “Dynamite.”—Wash¬ 
ington Herald. 
“Did your daughters marry rich mou?” 
“Not exactly. One married a farmer, 
and another married an ultimate con¬ 
sumer. But the third may make up 
for all that.” “How so?” “She’s en¬ 
gaged to a middleman.”—Louisville 
Courier-Journal. 
“Don’t tell me there is nothing in a 
name.” “What makes you say that?” 
“We had two men here, one named Can¬ 
non and the other Ball. Well, Cannon 
was fired and Ball was bounced.”— 
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Fertility of the Land Roberts. 1.50 
Fertilizers, Voorhees . 1.25 
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Manures, Semper .40 
Soils. Hllgard . 4.00 
The Soil. King. L.50 
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How Crops Fetid, Johnson. 1.50 
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