PROFITABLE EGG FARMING. 
will lay at least a month earlier than one that is 
allowed free range. 
House Influences Egg Production. 
The house where the laying stock is kept has 
a great influence upon winter egg production. 
There is a man here in New Hampshire who keeps 
seven thousand laying hens, in houses that are 
open to the weather on one side—the south— 
all the year round. While he is entitled to the 
credit of demonstrating the fact that fresh air is 
good for hens, yet it is safe to say that it is not 
a very heavy job on his farm to gather the eggs 
during the winter months. 
The house must be dry, warm, sunny and 
comfortable. Before the young birds are 
placed in it in the fall, it should be thoroughly 
renovated and whitewashed. If there is no 
scratching shed, litter must be placed in the 
house and the birds made to work for at least a 
part of what they eat. Birds in confinement 
need a moderate amount of exercise, although 
they need not be kept on the jump from morn¬ 
ing until night. There should be a box in the 
house with compartments for grit, charcoal and 
oyster shells, and these compartments should 
never be allowed to become empty. Eggs are 
37.7 per cent, water, and so the water supply 
should be carefully looked after. 
, Generous Feeding Absolutely Necessary. 
Generous feeding is absolutely necessary for 
eggs in the fall and winter, and the food must 
not only be generous in amount, but must also 
contain all the ingredients that are necessary to 
repair the waste in the bird’s system and pro¬ 
duce the egg. A balanced ration is best. By a 
balanced ration I do not mean a ration mathe¬ 
matically and scientifically compounded, but I 
mean a ration from which no important element 
is absent. 
A Four Days’ Bill of Fare. 
Instead of entering into the philosophy of 
feeding, which I have not time to do here, I can 
do no better than give a bill of fare for four days 
which has been thoroughly tested and will do 
the business: 
First Day: Potatoes boiled in the afternoon 
or evening and allowed to stand in the water in 
which they were boiled over night, eight quarts. 
In the morning pour off the surplus water from 
the potatoes, add the gluten, also add mixed 
green feed, two quarts, corn and oats ground 
and mixed (provender), two quarts. At noon 
throw whole wheat in litter, two ounces to each 
fowl. 
Second Day: Waste bread, soaked over night, 
eight quarts; beef scraps, two quarts; corn and 
oats mixed (provender), two quarts. At noon 
two ounces wheat or cracked corn to each fowl. 
Third Day: Clover, chopped fine and soaked 
over night, eight quarts. In the morning pour 
off the surplus water and add two quarts flour 
middlings, two quarts boiled beef and bone, two 
quarts corn meal and oats. Cracked corn for 
dinner, two ounces to each fowl. 
Fourth Day: Whole oats, soaked over night, 
eight quarts; gluten, soaked over night, four 
quarts. Add in the morning two quarts shorts, 
one quart beef and bone, two quarts corn and 
oats, ground and mixed. Noon, cracked corn 
or backweat. 
The Mash and the Litter. 
All are not situated so that they can feed as I 
have described, but all can give their fowls a 
warm mash in the morning in which there are 
corn meal, oat meal, shorts or middlings, and a 
little meat in some form. Feed them all they 
will eat up clean in fifteen minutes, and at noon 
give them enough grain in their litter to keep 
them scratching until dark. Don’t feed corn 
alon£. but vary by throwing in wheat, oats and 
occasionally some other grain. 
Green Food Every Day. 
Green food should be given to the birds every 
day, either in the mash or separately. Hang 
up a cabbage in the pen for them to pick at. 
Turnips, split in two and placed where they can 
get at them, will be eaten with a relish. 
Poultry Keeper. 
When the Pullets Take to Laying. 
At this time of the year we anxiously look day 
by day for our first pullets’ eggs. Some early 
hatched stock has been laying a week or two, 
but November is the month for pullets’ eggs. 
It is very important to place your pullets in 
coops as they are intended to remain during the 
fall and winter. It takes them a while to get 
accustomed to their surroundings, or, in other 
words, to feel at home. Fowls are great creat¬ 
ures of habit, and once they establish certain 
habits they do not like to be disturbed. Mov¬ 
ing layers, therefore, from coop to coop simply 
upsets their habits, and they begin all over again 
to study the new situation, and during this time 
they usually stop laying. 
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