PROFITABLE EGG FARMING. 
He expects to winter a stock of twelve hun¬ 
dred hens. He sells the eggs to private families, 
club houses and high class hotels in Boston. 
Many private families take cases of from fifteen 
to twenty dozen each, dividing them with their 
friends and paying Mr. Eddy his own price, 
which, he says, is never questioned, and which 
is in excess of the regular retail price. Today, 
October 13, he received 38 cents per dozen in 
these wholesale quantities. He has found it 
impossible to supply the trade which awaits 
him, and another season will add largely to his 
plant. 
Mr. Eddy keeps the Rhode Island Reds, which 
he has found quite satisfactory in egg produc¬ 
tion with this exception, the pullets lay a rather 
undersized egg. The hens do better in this 
respect and the eggs are reasonably large. He 
has this season a flock of White Wyandotte 
birds which he will give a fair trial, and should 
they prove to be better layers and a more prac¬ 
tical fowl than the Rhode Island Reds he will 
stock his entire plant with Wyandottes. He 
thinks them unquestionably the best all-round 
fowl, but is not quite sure if in egg production 
they will prove to be the best. The Rhode 
Island Reds.mature quickly, and he prefers the 
rose to the single comb. 
He is very particular about the laying equali¬ 
ties of the hens from whose eggs the cockerels 
are hatched, taking special pains to select the 
eggs from the best laying hens. In breeding 
to renew the laying stock, yearling hens are 
mated with cockerels, and well-matured pullets 
with cock birds. While he has no objection to 
breeding from well-matured young stock of both 
sexes he thinks the average results are better 
when the previous matings are used. In 
making these matings only the vigorous and 
prolific birds are used, 
TwojThousand Birds and Rations. 
The chickens are fed a soft food, one-half of 
the best bran and one-half Indian meal, with 
beef scrap worked gradually up to the propor¬ 
tion of 10 per cent, when the chicks are a few 
weeks old. They have also oatmeal, boiled 
rice, cracked corn and a variety of hard grain 
foods, and are allowed a grass range. While 
confined in large yards this range is practically 
free, as few enough are kept in a pen to allow a 
constant supply of grass to grow. The young 
cockerels are killed at the proper broiler and 
roaster age and are served to the guests of the 
Eddy House, a summer hotel which is kept by 
Mr. Eddy. The laying stock is fed a soft food 
with beef scrap, together with a considerable 
proportion of wheat and an abundance of clover, 
cabbage and other green foods. While some 
vegetables like potatoes, turnips, etc., are 
boiled and fed with the mash, Mr. Eddy has 
never been able to get satisfactory results on 
other than the stoutest kinel of feeding. He 
therefore disapproves of too many vegetables 
in the mash, reserving this sort of food for a 
side dish. 
Mr. Eddy raises about two thousand chickens 
each year and renews his laying stock from the 
pullets thus obtained. He is very particular in 
introducing new blood that the birds shall come 
from the most prolific and best laying flocks 
which he can find, and no chances of a back¬ 
ward step are taken. He is very decidedly of 
the opinion that there is nothing that can be 
raised on a farm which will compare in value 
with eggs as an all-year-round crop. To use 
his own words, “ Eggs are as good as gold dollars, 
and it is one of the most surprising things in the 
world to me that so little attention is paid to 
their production by farmers.” 
—Reliable Poultry Journal. 
TWO NEW ENGLAND EGG FARMS. 
An Egg-Farm Poultry House.—Seventeen Hun¬ 
dred Laying Hens Under One Roof. 
One of the largest poultry houses of 
which we have knowledge is the long 
house (or series of connected houses) 
on the poultry farm of G. F. Hosmer, 
Montvale, Woburn, Mass.; this house being 408 
feet long and accommodating seventeen hun¬ 
dred head of laying stock. It is as simple as 
possible in construction, consisting of roof and 
walls only, and having only wire netting par¬ 
titions between the pens. The house is 18 
feet wide and divided into 34 pens 12 x 18 feet 
each, and fifty head of Barred Plymouth Rock 
pullets or hens are housed in each pen. There 
is no alleyway (or walk), the attendant passing 
through the gates in the front end of the parti¬ 
tions between the pens from one end of the 
house to the other. At half a dozen convenient 
points are doors in the back side of the house, 
giving admission to the house from the drive¬ 
way along the rear; for convenience in moving 
stock in or out, cleaning the droppings from the 
roost platform, carrying in scratching litter, 
68 
