7She RURAL NEW-YORKER 
303 
r 
Poor Laying ^ 
f'onld you toll luo what is wrong with 
Tiiy hens? I havf a In in t (iO White Ply¬ 
mouth Koeks and < >ri>ingtiins. They are 
housed warm and diy in a house large 
enough for 1200 hmis. Tliey have deep 
litter of oat and rye straw and hay. I 
feed them in the imaning three quarts 
oats and one quart Alfalfa, -which has 
soaked over night, and feed hot in the 
motning with the water drained off. At 
noon I feed a dry mash of gluten, bran, 
middlings, beef scraps and Alfalfa. Water 
and oyster shells always before them. At 
night they get mixed' scratch feed, four 
quarts for 00 chickens. Every other day 
they get about one-half bushel cut-uii 
mangels. They did not start to lay until 
they were over eight months old and until 
after Christmas laid from IS to 2.‘> eggs 
a day: recently drojiplng oft' to eight to 
10 a day. They are all March-hatched 
pullets and have eaten a terrible lot of 
expensive feed since. They are light in 
weight but every one I killed had a big 
lump of fat inside. We have hatched 
from our own stock without changing for 
the last five years, always selecting the 
most healthy and best laying stock for 
breeding, but the results have not been 
satisfactory for the last two years. Do 
yoii think it would be better if we started 
with entirely new stock? yrns. w'. I. 
Connect lent. , 
If you conld start with new stock that 
you knew to be snjterior to your own, 
there would be some ob.iect in changing, 
but merely swapping your stock for some 
other only eqinil. or possibly inferior, 
would not get y<iu anywhere. You may 
be able to get a male of some eipiall.v 
good, or better, .strain for your breetling 
pen this coming season, and, in that case, 
the change might prove beneficial. If you 
are feeding a dry mash at noon only, it is 
quite jiossible that the jiullets are not 
eating enough to satisfy the needs of 
better haying. A dry mash should be 
kejit befoi-e the birds at least half tin* 
time, and nnist iionltrymen keej) the dry 
mash hopjiers always ojjen. Fowls will 
eat but little drj* ground grain at a time 
and need to go often to the source of 
sujiiily if the.v are to get enough to make 
eggs. 'I'he fa<-t that your pullets are light 
in weight would suggest, that they have 
not had more than enough food to supply 
the needs of J^heir bodies-. Eggs iii-e jiro- 
dm.'ed from surplus. You do not give 
proportions in your mash, but the addi¬ 
tion of cornmeal would improve it. You 
are feeding pretty he.avily of mangels, 
too. They cannot replace grain in an egg 
ration. This has^ been a trying Winter 
for all flocks. Egg jiroduction has not 
been up to normal. This, with the jirices 
of grjnn, has indeed been ilisconraging, 
iiiid the result .at this time will be de- 
jilorabh*. j; 
THE HENYARD 
Selecting the Laying Hen 
This is written by C. P.. Kent, and is a 
successful effort to show the jioultrymen 
the outside and the inside of both good 
and poor egg-laying machines. Several 
of the pictures are in colors, showing the 
char.-icter of the comb, wattles and the 
color of the beak. The.se are important, 
as we see that the laying hen finally lays 
herself out. so that her beak and legs 
lose their yellow color. 
It would be impossible to give a full 
review of this bulletin without quoting 
the whole of it. and the color work is an 
e.ssential feature. We think this is one 
of the books that every ])oultryinan 
should study. It will pay him to'take 
this book in hand and go through his 
flock several times during the year study¬ 
ing these jiictures in connection with the 
hens/ and in that way gain what we call 
instinct in spotting a drone. This 
liiuniiblet is known as Extension Bulletin 
21. The iiicture. taken from its cover, 
shows how a good White Leghorn bird 
ought to look .'t you. 
Damp Henhouse 
During the Winter months I am 
troubled very much with dampness in 
laying house. The space under house is 
Ix'iarded U)) on the sides and back, the 
front being open. The front of the la.v- 
ing house contains 800 sipiare feet, of 
which 208 sipiare feet is covered by mus¬ 
lin curtains and 102 square feet by glass. 
There is no ventilation in the rt'ar of the 
house, that being perfectl.v tight, also the 
sides. The floor of the entirt* house (floor 
space. l.fiOO square feet) is alwa.vs damj) 
and the litter wet and soggy; when I 
clean the hou.se and put clean litter in 
four or live days thereafter it is alwavs 
wet. M. K.' 
Excessive damimess in a iioultry house 
indicates 1,-ick of sufficient ventilation, 
and. as you siieak of muslin covi-red open¬ 
ings only, I have little doubt tlnit your 
trouble lies in the insufficient inferchiinge 
of air through them. I’ersonally, I be¬ 
lli the last few years gre.-it <levelop- 
ments have been made in the art or in¬ 
stinct required in .selecting laving hens 
There have alwr.*-• ' robber hens in 
tllO. iioc*. 1 ,in npef- 2 S 
‘J’- .. ■ ■ • ..ig for laying 
(pialities. .... . ./iies jnuefi as 
tlie busiest .worker ..u f we think 
they eat more and thev ^ usually loud¬ 
est in their talk, like iiumr.'. l.oilfers, who 
would like to htive ns tmder".tand that 
every hen in their flock will lav .'KIO 
egg^; a year. 
Tom Barron on hi.s vi.sit to America 
several- years ago, gave .some exhibitions 
Ill picking out the drones, which made a 
deej) imjn-ession ui>ou the business, d'hose 
who attended the jioiiltry meeting at 
Storrs, Conn., will rcmembei- how lie 
stood on the top of the henhouse, ami 
the birds were passed, nji to hiin fin- ex¬ 
amination. Jn )n-a<-fi(-ally ever.v <-ase 
Laiion was able tii .sele<*t the lavers and 
tell their coinpiirative quality. 
Erfrlently the greater jiart of this 
power of stdection- lay in -what we call 
instinct, gained from personal study of 
a hen. It would not be possible' for 
Larron or .an.vone else to teach this- in¬ 
stinct so that another could learn just 
how to do it from the written or printed 
word. The student would have to figure 
that (lart for himself. In the la.st few 
years however, the poultrymen have made 
a v.‘ry c.-ireful study of thi.s matter and 
li.ive developed ii good .scale of points or 
I'h.'sK-al indii-atioiis. These im'lude the 
general .-iiipearam-e of the bird, the car¬ 
nage of her head and comb, her actions, 
her general .shape, the arrangement of the 
lielvic bones, and the color of the skin, 
the legs.^ the beak and other parts of the 
body. This has gone far enough, so that 
a careful study of these points will enable 
a poultry-keeper to make a very fail* 
.ludgment in running over his flock'. The 
frightfully^ high cost of fe»*d this year 
has made it ahsolutely necessar.v that the 
drones should be cast out. There is only 
a narrow margin of jn-ofit in feeding the 
workers, but the drones are nothing but 
a nuisance and a fraud. 
Many experiments Lave been tried in 
culling the noii-workers out of a flock. 
U hen this -ivork is done by a tierson with 
both experience and instinct, some re¬ 
markable results have been obtained, and 
every da.v we receive letters from people 
who w-ant to know* how to cull their flock 
proiierl.v.^ The best statement of the ex¬ 
terior j[ioint.s to be noted in this work is 
given in a recent bulletin from Cornell. 
A White Leghorn Head 
lieve muslin to be an utter failure as a 
means of ventilation, and, .so far as my 
obs»>rvation got*s. it is being discarded b.v 
Iionltrymen. 'I'h * iiores of tin* cloth soon 
become clogged by dust, making it jirac- 
tically airtight. I know of no way of 
keejiing a well-filled poultry hou.se' dry 
other than by opening the front to back 
at the toji, with V-shaped boards to i-lose 
the side openings, or they may be taken 
entirely out. There is a limit, of (-oiirse, 
to the open space that can be allowed, 
but it is not as quii-kly reached as most 
jieople think. The State College of Agri- 
<-ultiii-e at Ithaca. X. Y. (Cornell) has 
devised a wind baffler that is apparently 
giving satisfai-tion where u.sed. This con¬ 
sists- of slats, arranged somewhat like 
..tho.se of a blind but in parallel series .so 
placed that wind cannot blow* directly 
through them, and fixed in a frame. The.se 
wind bafflers take the pla<-e of muslin 
covered opening.s, or of unprotected open¬ 
ings, and admit air freely while protect¬ 
ing the birds from direi-t drafts. A re- 
(piest for de.scriptive circular, addressed 
as above, will doubtless bring you jilans 
for installing them. ji. n. ]>. 
Substitutes for Meat Scrap 
IIow is tankage as .substitute for beef 
scrap for fow-ls? If not. is milk onlv sub¬ 
stitute? Scrap is .'flOO per ton ami hard 
to get. How much can poultrymen afford 
to pay for it? w. jr. 
New Jersey. 
I have never known of tankage being 
fed to poultry, though I know of no reason 
why_ it should not be. V(>ry likely the 
quality of that meat product has not ap¬ 
pealed to poultrymen, though it is fed to 
hogs. _ .sheej) and even horses. Without 
knowing more about it. I conld not recom¬ 
mend it as part of the poultry ration. 
IMilk, fed liberally, is a substituti*' for meat 
scrap, though not quite a complete one. 
At its pri'sent high price meat sera]) can¬ 
not be fed as liberally as we have been 
accustomed to fei'ding it; jierhaps one- 
(‘ighth or one-ninth of the mash, by weight, 
in.stead of from one-fourth to one-sixth, 
is as large a quantity as we are justified 
in using now*, though much depends upon 
the flock. Pullets that are laying well 
will pay for considerably more ilieat than 
older hens that are waiting until Spring 
comes in sight before spending much time 
on the nestv. ,, n 
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