7ht RURAL NEW-YORKER 
109 
The Henyard 
New York State Egg Contest 
This contest is conducted at the New York 
State Institute of Applied Agriculture, Farming- 
dale, L. I. Each pen contains 10 birds. 
First column of figures represents total for 
week; last column, total to Dec. 26, 1923: 
S. C. W. Leghorns 
Meadowedge I'm, Cedarliurst, N. Y.... 39 282 
Lakes’ Pltry Km, N. Amityville, N. Y. 11 38 
H. F. Hendrickson, Bridgehampton, 
N. Y.35 161 
Hill View Fm, Bridgehampton, N. Y... 45 243 
Eusner’s Pltry Fm, Montieello, N. Y.... 23 146 
Hill Top Fm, Huntington, N. Y. 24 177 
D. A. Williams, Kennedy, N. Y. 20 196 
Otto L. F'lad, Farmingdale, N. Y. 10 101 
New & Pockman, Valatie. N. Y. 17 114 
C. A. Seaver, Smithtown Branch, N. Y. 25 162 
Bellmore Pltry Fm, Bellmore, N. Y.... 2 19 
Bellmore Pltry Fm, Bellmore, N, Y.... 25 70 
G. W. Stoll. Oceanside, N. Y.26 167 
Manhasset Fm, Calverton, N. Y. 36 206 
Kirkup’s Pltry Fm, Mattituck, N. Y... 24 141 
Kirkup’s Pltry Fm, Mattituck, N. Y 7 ... 29 119 
Deerfield Fms, Deer Park, N. Y. 14 96 
E. E. Champlin, Bellport, N. Y. 39 116 
Homestead Fm, Little Britain, N. Y,.. 24 179 
Wellward Fm, E. Setauket, N. Y. 30 187 
A. R. Scott, Toms River, N. J. 34 163 
E. & D. Chicken Fm, Mt. Sinai, N. Y.. 24 129 
Pussy Willow Egg Fm, E. Moriches, 
N. Y...40 133 
Fluhrer F’m, Mountain Dale, N. Y. 22 144 
Paul H. Leniker, W. Haven, Conn.26 172 
Tanglewold FYn. Mastic, N. Y. 12 87 
John Boshler, Hempstead, N. Y. 22 138 
Benjamin Brower, Hempstead, N. Y... 2 24 
White Springs Fm, Geneva, N. Y. 24 182 
Egner’s Pltry Pm, Bayport, N. Y. 7 59 
Stewart L. Purdie, Skaneateles, N. Y.. 10 45 
Herbert A. Weikert, Happauge, N. Y.. 19 79 
The Mungrasteesee, State College, Pa.. 12 106 
The Mungrasteesee, State College, Pa.. 25 181 
C. L. Flaccus, Glenshaw, Pa. 43 222 
F. J. Loveland, New City, N. Y. 9 127 
Hollywood Pltry Fm, Hollywood, Wash. 35 237 
Homeland Fm, Rosendale, N. Y... 8 78 
Geo. B. Ferris, Grand Rapids, Mich.... 38 279 
Edgar Briggs, Pleasant Valley, N. Y... 6 38 
Le F’evre & Petersen, New Paltz, N. Y. 27 146 
P. D. Zimmerman, Harrisburg, ,Pa.... 14 84 
Downs Grove Fm, E. Quogue, N. Y.... 17 111 
Half Hollows F‘m, Wyandanch, N. Y... 23 116 
J. F\ Francais, Westhampton Beach, 
N. Y. 32 235 
John Bullen, Westhampton, N. Y. 17 132 
Melville Pltry Fm, Melville, N. Y. 7 115 
Mattituck W. L. I'm. Mattituck, N. Y. 3- 93 
Lone Oak Pltry Fm, Babylon, N. Y.’.... 4 45 
Lone Oak Pltry F’m, Babylon, N. Y... 3 104 
Kehoe-Smith, Medford, N. Y. 14 188 
Rara Avis F’m, Centereaeh, N. Y. 7 23 
Cross Roads I’m, Greenlawn, N. Y. 21 155 
Member L. I. Pltry Assn., Hicksville, 
y. 16 160 
John j. Byrne, Farmingdale, N. Y. 36 198 
Pinelawn Fm Products Co., Inc., Pine- 
lawn, N. Y. 34 279 
Member L. I. Pltry Assn, Moriches, 
N. Y.32 187 
Member L. I. Pltry Assn, Rocky Point, 
N. Y. 16 127 
Member L. I. Pltry Assn, Hauppauge, 
M. y. 19 116 
Oak Hill Fm, Hauppauge, N. Y.27 152 
R. C. W. Leghorns 
Ulster Pltry Fm, Wallkill. N. Y. 18 89 
Valley Fm, Wallkill, N. Y. 17 41 
S. C. R. I. Reds 
Downs Grove Fm, E. Quogue, N. Y.... 9 32 
C. O. Havden, Whitneyville, Conn. 27 53 
W. E. Whitson, E. Williston, N. Y_ 19 106 
J. W. Everitt, Glen Cove, N. Y. 43 237 
West Neck Fm, Huntington, N. Y. 32 260 
Robert Seaman, Jericho, N. Y. 24 78 
Andrew Ibsen. Hamden, Conn.22 172 
Deer BrooK Pltry I'm., Short F’alls, 
N. H. 21 46 
B. Andalusians 
George W. Allen, Old Westbury, N. Y. 5 11 
George W. Allen, Old Westbury, N. Y. 5 9 
S. C. B. Minorcas 
Yama Fms, Napanoch, N. Y. 0 41 
The Holmestead Fm, Lake Grove, N. Y. 1 38 
S. C. R. I. Whites 
O. G. L. Lewis, Paoli, Pa. 20 75 
White Wyandottes 
Member L. I. Pltry Assn, Medford, 
N. Y.31 124 
Dr. Elwood A. Curtis, Hicksville, N. Y. 0 4 
Lakeside I'm, Mattituck, N. Y.24 162 
Wal-Ruth Pltry Fm, Hicksville, N. Y. 27 180 
Harvey V. Byerly, Sharpsville, Pa. 25 128 
W, Plymouth Rocks 
W. Jennings, Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y. 0 1 
IV. Jennings, Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y. 5 6 
Lebert’s Pltry F’m, E. Northport, N. Y. 26 145 
Robert's Pltry Fm, E. Northport, N. Y. 32 172 
Ellen Day Ranken, Huntington, N. Y... 34 125 
Davidson Brothers, Upton, Mass.16 58 
B. Plymouth Rocks 
The Paddocks, Oyster Bay, N. Y. 18 114 
Valley Brook Fm, Peapack, N. J. 24 60 
Walter B. Pike, Farmingdale, N. Y... 20 88 
Member L. I. Pltry Assn, Roslyn, 
N. Y. 23 77 
Fire Place Fm, Brookhaven, N. Y. 29 181 
J.; F. Francais, Westhampton Beach, 
, N. Y. 26 183 
Mabel L. Nute, Monsey, N. Y. 35 96 
Ontario Agr. College, Guelph, Ont., Can. 23 93 
Tanglewold Fm, Mastic, N. Y. 19 86 
Lewis Fm, Davisville, It. 1.39 147 
Clifford C. Downs, Woodbridge, Conn... 28 188 
A. C. Jones, Georgetown, Del.30 196 
Howard A. Wells, Riverhead, N. Y_ 12 67 
W. H. B. Kent, Cazenovia, N. Y.29 113 
Control of Roupy Colds 
Regarding cold and distempers of a 
ro «py character in fowls, my treatment 
tv meh 1 read in a farm paper one year 
ago and have used this Winter has been 
very successful. I discovered this trou¬ 
ble two days before Thanksgiving and 
found about 20 birds that night with dis¬ 
charges at the nostrils and some of them 
puffed a little under their eyes. I caught 
every one that night and put them in 
au open-front roosting house, protected 
from winds. Those birds I found 
the fresh, keen night air helped wonder¬ 
fully. I made a 5 per cent solution of 
ereolin and as I put them in put their 
he,ads in it and held them until they 
strangled. If caught in the first stages 
one application will do the trick usually 
The next morning I started using a 
reliable roup remedy in their drinking 
water as a preventive for the rest of the 
flock. Clean out all litter down to floor 
and spray with the same ereolin solution, 
and where the birds are congregated spray 
over them or rather above, so the mist 
will fall on them. Spray all drinking 
and feed dishes. Clean off dropping 
boards every day and spray each time. 
Every night take a lantern in one hand 
and ereolin solution in the other and go 
in your poultry house and go over them 
very closely. Catch every hen that shows 
the least bit of moisture around the nose 
or sneezes or coughs, or shows the least 
bit of swelling around the face, and give 
them the same treatment. Repeat this 
every night and keep everything clean, and 
it will not take long to rid them of their 
roupy colds. This is work every minute, 
but if you get rid of these colds you must 
get right after them. Watch those 
through the day that are sitting around, 
catch them and give them the same dose. 
Don’t be afraid of it, if they hang their 
heads down ; it won’t hurt them. I lost 
three out of 500, and didn’t stop pro¬ 
duction a particle. After spraying floors 
put clean straw right back; don’t wait 
for it to dry. As I said, this trouble 
broke out in my flock two days before 
Thanksgiving, and I have not had a bird 
affected since. v. l. 
Your treatment of your flock was or¬ 
thodox and certainly thoroughly carried 
out; the trouble is that we do not know 
that you had what others describe as 
ference in the eggs and people have to be 
educated to use them. It took me almost 
two years to do it, but I finally accomp¬ 
lished the feat. 
I am in the potato chip business and 
call on the trade in Hagerstown three 
times a week, and take my eggs along 
with me, both hen and duck eggs. When 
I would go into a store they would say, 
“Have you any eggs?” I would answer 
“Yes. but they are duck eggs,” and they 
would throw up their hands and say, 
“We cannot use duck eggs.” I explained 
to them that there was a vast difference 
between Indian Runner eggs raised off 
the water and the common duck eggs, and 
that they were so much larger than hens’ 
eggs; two duck eggs being equal to three 
hens’ eggs, and that they were fine for 
baking. So they would try a few at a 
time, and some sold them for Black Mi¬ 
norca eggs, and after the people tried 
them they wanted more. Now I have 
several customers that will not buy any¬ 
thing else as long as they can get duck 
eggs. I had one man tell me that he 
had a customer ask for eggs and he gave 
him hens’ eggs, and the customer brought 
them back and said if he could not get 
duck eggs he did not want any, and he 
went away without eggs. 
I found out that about three weeks 
before and the same after Easter you 
can get at least double for your duck 
eggs as you can for hen eggs on the 
Baltimore market. Last Spring when 
we were getting 20 to 25 cents per dozen 
Poor Laying 
I have a flock of 350 pullets, Rhode 
Island Reds and Plymouth Rocks, which 
were hatched May 1. They were raised 
under Cornell feeding methods on a free 
range. At present they are in their Win¬ 
ter quarters, and are laying only 10 per 
cent. I began using lights December 1 
from four o’clock in the morning daily. 
Also give them lights for one hour in the 
evening from 9 to 10. Would like to 
know your opinion about it and why I 
am getting so few eggs. s. s. 
Sullivan Co., N. Y. 
It is not necessary to use artificial 
lights both morning and evening, the 
idea of artificial lighting being to 
lengthen the short days of Winter and 
make them approximately of the same 
length as the nights. This gives the 
fowls a working day comparable with 
that of Summer, and avoids th#* long 
early morning fast that is unavoidable 
when the flock gets its last meal at 
about four o’clock in the’ afternoon and 
the first one of the following day at about 
eight o’clock. Lights may be turned on 
as soon as it begins to grow dark in the 
afternoon and continued until the final 
meal of hard grain at about eight o’clock 
in the evening, or the hens may be taught 
to come down from their perches at about 
the latter hour for an evening lunch, 
lights not having previously been turned 
on. _ If preferred, lights may be turned 
on in the morning, lengthening the day 
at that end. It seems to matter little 
which method is used, and of course, 
there is no objection, aside from expense 
and trouble, to using both morning and 
evening lights. There are so many fac¬ 
tors that influence egg production that 
it is impossible to say why a given flock 
does not produce more under certain con¬ 
ditions of care. Some hens lay well with 
indifferent care, others haven’t the ability 
to give good production under any condi¬ 
tions. One must know considerably more 
about a flock than the method of feeding 
to give any intelligent answer to the 
question why it does or does not produce 
satisfactorily. m. b. d. 
Methods of Feeding 
Practically all college and experiment 
station bulletins advise feeding some 
amount (usually one-third) of scratch 
feed in the morning, whereas three of the 
most important commercial houses advise 
no scratch in the morning, and all in the 
evening (about 4 o’clock). What is your 
opinion on this? G. L. G. 
New York. 
This is a good illustration of the fact 
that hens will lay, if sufficiently fed, un¬ 
der a variety of methods of care, and 
there is no one method which has been 
reduced to such a basis of scientific ex¬ 
actness as to be generally recognized as 
the best. It is considered good practice 
to feed a little more hard grain than 
mash while pullets are developing, about 
equal quantities when laying gets under 
way, and a little more mash than hard 
grain during full production, and when 
laying begins to slacken late in the sea¬ 
son. The feeding of the whole grains 
may be made to govern the consumption 
of mash to a considerable extent. With¬ 
holding grain in the morning induces 
greater consumption of mash through the 
day, but it also discourages activity in 
the morning, when vigorous scratching 
in the litter warms up the birds. To 
further this activity in cold weather, 
many poultrymen give a little grain at 
noon also. I think that you will find it 
the consensus of opinion among good 
poultrymen that a part of the grain ra¬ 
tion should be fed in the litter in the 
morning, perhaps one-fourth, varying the 
amount according to the flock’s inclina¬ 
tion to eat the mash before" it, and that 
the balance should be fed at night. There 
is no question that the birds should go 
to roost with crops full of hard grain, 
even if the matter of early feeding of 
grain is left to choice, or notion. 
M. B. D. 
Henhouse of Field Stones 
I intend to build a chicken house of 
field stones. .Could you give me some 
idea as to how to do it? a. g. f. 
There is no particular “how” to build¬ 
ing a poultry-house of field stones; the 
laying of the walls must be left to the 
mason employed, he using either flat 
stones or cobbles, as directed. Unless 
you wish to build of stones for the orna¬ 
mental effect, I should be inclined to dis¬ 
courage your use of this material. Stone 
walls are good conductors of heat and 
therefore “cold” in the Winter. It is 
more difficult to keep them dry through 
ventilation, and I do not think that those 
who have them find them quite as satis¬ 
factory as wood buildings. If you wish 
to build of stone, however, decide upon 
the size of the building that you wish, 
allowing 3 to 4 sq. ft. of floor space per 
fowl. A depth of about 16 ft., with a 
height in front of 8 ft., and in the rear 
of 4% or 5 ft., would be desirable. The 
front should be equipped with ample win¬ 
dow space for ventilation, the windows 
extending to the plate above and reaching 
to within about 2 ft. of the floor. All 
other sides should be airtight. I should 
not want a stone house as deep as one of 
wood might well be, since it would be 
more essential that sunlight and air 
should reach the rear of the building. A 
concrete floor and ordinary shed roof 
would complete the structure, m. b. d. 
An Early Start in the Poultry Business 
roup. However, there seems to be a 
tendency now to ascribe all those condi¬ 
tions formerly known as colds, diphtheria, 
chicken-pox, canker, contagious catarrh, 
etc., to one cause, a virus .that may pro¬ 
duce the mild symptoms of colds in one 
case and the much more severe ones of 
true roup in another. It is a matter for 
the pathologist to figure out whether 
more than one disease producing organ¬ 
ism is involved in these cases or not; the 
lay poultryman cannot do it. The milder 
cases, described as “Fall colds,” usually 
recover very much as colds in human sub¬ 
jects do, all that is necessary being to 
place the birds in clean, well-ventilated 
quarters. The more severe cases, in 
which the discharge from the nostrils be¬ 
comes thick and purulent, eyes swell and 
perhaps protrude, cankers form in the 
mouth and the eruption of chicken-pox 
appears upon the face, comb and wattles, 
present quite a different picture. The 
cause may be the same, but the effect is 
certainly quite different. It is the more 
severe cases that I have referred to as 
true roup. 
Dipping or spraying the head, as you 
describe, using an antiseptic solution, "ap¬ 
pears to be effective in many cases, prob¬ 
ably those in which the virus is not very 
virulent, or the resistive power of the 
birds is strong. A milder disinfectant 
than a 5 per cent solution of ereolin is 
usually recommended, though some of the 
mild disinfectants are undoubtedly too 
mild to be effective. I should prefer a 
2 per cent solution of ereolin to one of 
5 per cent strength, in mild cases at least. 
Your care of utensils, droppings boards, 
litter, etc., shows that you realize the 
necessity of guarding against re-infeetion 
through the discharges from diseased 
birds’ heads, and your generally thorough 
work undoubtedly had much to do with 
your success, though, of course, you may 
have been fortunate in dealing with one 
of the milder infections. m. b. d. 
for hen eggs, I was getting 45 to 52 
cents for my duck eggs in Baltimore. 
Maryland. d. v. bike. 
Diseased Wattles 
No Trouble Selling Duck Eggs 
I have had the same experience with 
duck eggs as J. A. B. Dec. 29 issue. I 
had hard work to get anyone to take my 
duck eggs at first as everyone seemed to 
be against duck eggs. Even in the Fall, 
when eggs were scarce, they did not want 
them, for they said they were strong and 
they could not use them. I do not know 
if J. A. B. has his ducks running on 
water or not but this makes a vast dif- 
We have a serious and what is to us a 
mysterious trouble among our poultry. 
We first noticed a eoc-kerel with his wat¬ 
tles swollen as though frozen. Then other 
cockerels were affected. In most if not 
all cases it seems to begin on the front of 
the w’attles, with a scaly, dried appear¬ 
ance, which has a very offensive odor. 
Then the wattles begin to swell, turn 
black, and finally shrink and dry; will 
probably slough off. At no time is there 
any discharge. The trouble seems to be 
local, as the fowls are well and vigorous 
through it all. We have them separated 
from the rest of the dock. The last two 
cases we dipped the wattles in water as 
hot as the hand could bear, with a skim 
of kerosene oil on top. This seems, after 
two days, to have arrested, perhaps cured 
the trouble. Now we find an affected pul¬ 
let. Will you advise us what to do? 
Perrysburg, N. Y. h. p. 
There is a disease of the wattles, 
known as edema of the wattles, that re¬ 
sembles the one that you describe. It is 
an infectious disease, caused by the same 
organism that causes fowl cholera, or one 
similar to it. The symptoms of this arc 
described as sudden enlargement of the 
wattles, with more or less distension by 
fluid. In the beginning, the wattles are 
hot, dark red in color, and exude a clear 
fluid if cut. The affected birds act gen¬ 
erally ill. Later, the wattles become 
thickened and hard. Death may occur 
from general septic infection. This does 
not, in all details, answer to the descrip¬ 
tion that you give, since you say that 
your birds do not appear ill and that the 
wattles usually slough off, but, if not the 
same disease, I think that the one you 
describe is also caused by an infecrive 
organism of some kind, very likely intro¬ 
duced through wounds or cracks in the 
skin of the wattles; the result being sep¬ 
tic inflammation with final death of the 
tissues. I should isolate all affected fowls 
and disinfect the eating and drinking 
utensils used by the flock. I doubt if 
there is anything that you can do to ar¬ 
rest the disease after it has started, 
though, in the case of edema of the wat¬ 
tles mentioned above, cropping the wattles 
with a pair of sharp scissors is recom¬ 
mended. M. B. D. 
