PROFITABLE EGG FARMING. 
run the plant chiefly as an egg-farm, although 
the incubators and brooders will be occupied in 
winter with chicks for broilers and roasters. 
We spent a few minutes inspecting the old, 
old dwelling house, built in 1703, still in good, 
habitable condition, and the old hand-hewn 
beams of oak look as though they were good for 
another two hundred years. The rooms are 
furnished with the old time furniture, and any¬ 
one enjoying the antique would have much 
pleasure in a ramble through that old house. 
Eating our lunch as we drove along the 
charming, woodsy roads, we came in due time 
to the poultry farm of Mr. Geo. E. Howland, of 
Fairhaven, who keeps about fourteen hundred 
head of fowls, for eggs only. Here can be seen 
in perfection the growth of a poultry farm. 
Mr. Howland bought the farm about ten years 
ago, and started in business with a few pens of 
fowls, housed in buildings of various sizes and 
shapes. The plant has gradually grown, ab¬ 
sorbing an adjoining farm on the north; and 
the buildings, which are scattered all over the 
two farms, are mostly of the lean-to-shed pat¬ 
tern. Some of these houses are of stone ends 
and back, the front and roof of wood; but the 
majority of them are wood, the walls shingled, 
the roofs of all being covered with tarred felting. 
Three or four houses, including two that they 
are just building, are sixty feet long, divided into 
five pens 11 x 12, with yards 12 x 100 in front; 
but all the others are scattered about the rocky 
fields, being about one hundred and fifty feet 
apart, but set in such a position as favored easy 
access by the horse and feed wagon. 
The stock here was mostly “ common hens,” 
although some first crosses were in evidence, 
and Leghorn and Minorca blood was easily pre¬ 
dominant. The object being eggs, and only 
eggs, the stock is bred for layers, and only enough 
chickens raised to reproduce about two-thirds 
of the laying stock, the best third of the old 
stock being carried over. Mr. Howland puts 
never more than twenty birds in a pen or house. 
As the latter average to be about 11x14 feet in 
size it is easy to see that they have (with abso¬ 
lutely free range) plenty of elbow room. We 
told him of Mr. Hamblin’s houses, which we had 
seen but an hour before, and that Mr. Hamblin 
planned to house forty birds in a house 8 x 12. 
“He’ll miss it if he does,” said Mr. Howland, “I 
have proved that I can get more eggs from 
twenty birds together than from forty in the 
same house; not only more eggs per hen, but, 
actually, more eggs per house. I have tried it 
and proved it.” As we fully agreed with him 
there was no chance for an argument. 
Mr. Howland sprays the insides of his houses 
twice a year with petroleum, and the effect is to 
darken them very much. We cannot but think 
whitewash would be superior, because it would 
be equally cleansing, and would make the houses 
lighter, more cheerful. 
Mr. Howland “ pickles ” his eggs in spring, 
when eggs are selling at a low price, and sells 
them when eggs are scarce. He put down 
seventy-five hundred dozen last spring, fifty 
barrels of one hundred and fifty dozen each, 
and two-thirds of them are already gone to 
market. He preserves them by the lime-water 
process, having an improvement upon that 
process by which he can keep the eggs about as 
fresh as when laid, and he warrants them to 
“ beat up into frosting,” or stand any other test 
of freshness. As the dealers are at this season 
glad to get them, and “running after him for 
more, ” Mr. Howland thinks there is a good 
profit in pickling eggs, in spite of the fact that 
there is quite a bill of labor attached. 
Mr. Howland hatches and raises his chickens 
by the old hen method, there being neither 
incubator nor brooder on the place; and he 
also doesn’t believe in cut fresh bone, having 
fed it for three years and discarded it. He 
says he can get more eggs from his fowls by 
using “beef scraps” for animal food than he 
can when feeding cut bone, hence he feeds beef 
scraps. His ration is a mash consisting of 
cooked vegetables mixed up with a meal which 
is five parts shorts and one part beef scraps, 
and a little condition powder in the morning, 
and in the afternoon a feed of corn, oats and 
wheat, equal parts. He buys three hundred to 
four hundred bushels of small potatoes each fall 
for winter feeding; as he docs no farming 
whatever he has to buy his vegetables. An¬ 
other thing that he does is to buy grain in large 
quantities when it is low in price. He has just 
got in about seventeen hundred bushels, as 
grain is now very low. 
We sometimes hear it said that large poultry- 
farms never have succeeded; but here is one 
that most certainly has. It has grown from 
small beginnings, an additional farm has been 
bought, a fine new dwelling house has been 
built, (the old cottage being moved back about 
fifty yards and used now as grain-store house), 
and there are very many evidences of a pros- 
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