DRY LAND FARMING IN EASTERN COLORADO 
II 
The most money is in eggs from a special egg producing breed 
and strain. Egg laying strains of general purpose breeds come next 
in order for profits. 
The average Colorado poultry raiser says that his chickens eat 
their heads off. His flock is a mixture of all ages, all colors and all 
breeds. Each breed needs a different treatment. Feed that will make 
a lazy Plymouth rock fat and worthless will stimulate an active Leg¬ 
horn to heavy laying. The feed required by a laying pullet to provide 
for both eggs and growth will ruin a three year old hen. 
Severe culling is the first step towards profit. Experts estimate 
that the average Colorado flock produces an average of sixty eggs 
per hen each year and that where the poorer half of such a flock is 
culled out, the average will rise to 120 eggs per hen, per year. Culling 
is particularly important to the new dry land settler, as he needs to 
make every ounce of feed return a profit, and he can not afford to 
feed unprofitable poultry. 
In the average flock there are old hens that lay none, or few eggs, 
roosters that are not needed and usually late hatched or stunted pullets 
that lay little and eat much. These culls usually make up half or more 
of the flock, and the good layers have to support them. 
Feeding Poultry. 
During a considerable part of the year hens on the farm will pick 
up enough waste feed to supply them, but they should be watched 
every day and fed whenever the waste supply is short. Wheat should 
form half the ration for the hens, and the other half can be a mixture 
of milo maize, barley, corn and oats. 
When hens do not get all the worms and insects they want they 
must be fed meat. Meat meal is the cheapest form in which meat for 
poultry can be bought. Often rabbits are trapped and fed cooked 
Hens need meat in some form daily, but in moderate quantities. Over 
feeding is shown by looseness of the bowels. It is a common custom 
to throw the offal at butchering time where the hens can get it and to 
let them feed on the carcasses of dead cattle. Almost alwa5^s in these 
cases, hens will over eat sufficiently to reduce their egg yield, and if 
they have not had meat for sometime, will gorge themselves to such 
an extent as never again to be profitable. This meat is likely to taint 
the eggs and the flesh. Skim milk and curd will take the place of 
meat. 
Poultry should have access at all times to oyster shells and hard, 
sharp grit. The Maine Experiment Station found that a laying hen 
consumed four pounds of oyster shells and two pounds of grit a year. 
Often it is necessary to buy grit on farms where there is an abundance 
of gravel and sand, but none with sharp, grinding edges. 
Poultry should have all the clean, pure water they will drink at 
least three times a day. A general cause for well fed hens not laying 
is lack of water. Sixty-five per cent, of the egg and fifteen per cent. 
