Chapter V: Management of Fowls (1)

The methods of managing fowls vary according to the conditions under which they are kept and the time that the keeper can give them. Fowls ought to have an outdoor run, and it is desirable that this should be large enough to be kept in sod; but very few people in towns can give their fowls grass yards, and the advantages of an outdoor run will not in themselves compensate for neglect in other matters. Hence we often see fowls under poor conditions, with good care, doing better than fowls, in a much more favorable environment, that are given indifferent care. No absolute rules for keeping fowls under any given conditions can be made. In general, small flocks of fowls that have free range or large, grassy yards need very little attention, while those that are closely confined require a great deal.

With good care the egg production of fowls in close confinement is often better than that from fowls at liberty, but if the cost of caring for the fowls is computed at current rates for common labor, the rate of compensation is often higher on fowls running at large than on fowls in confinement which are producing many more eggs. The question of profits from amateur poultry keeping, however, should not be considered solely with reference to the compensation for time used, nor should such work be adjusted wholly with reference to economic results, for it combines recreation, education, and money compensation, and the first two results should have as much consideration as the last.

In this chapter the methods adapted to small flocks are first described for the instruction of the pupil, and then descriptions of operations on a larger scale are given for his information.

SMALL FLOCKS ON TOWN LOTS

=Numbers in flocks.= The average number of fowls kept by a town family for its own use is about one dozen. Very few who keep hens have less than half a dozen, and not many who plan only to supply their own tables have more than a dozen and a half. Six fowls, if well cared for, will produce all the eggs used by an average family of two or three persons during the greater part of the year.

=Houses and yards.= For a dozen medium-sized fowls the house should be about 8 ft. x 8 ft. on the ground, with the highest point of the roof about 6 or 7 feet from the floor. The general rule is to make the poultry house face the sun, and have the windows and the outside doors in or near the front. The object of this is to get as much sunlight in the house as possible in winter, when the sun is low, and to have the walls tight that are exposed to the prevailing cold winds. In the Northern Hemisphere the front of the house is toward the south; in the Southern Hemisphere it is toward the north. In tropical and subtropical countries houses are often so constructed that they can be kept open on all sides in summer and closed tightly, except in front, during cool weather.

If the land on which a house stands is sandy and well drained, the floor may be of earth. The common practice where earth floors are used is to fill the earth level with the top of the sill and renew it once a year by removing the soil that has become mixed with droppings of the fowls and putting in fresh earth. When a house stands on wet land or on clay soil, it is better to have a floor of boards or of cement.

Fowls may be confined to a house for a year or more and lay well and be in apparently good condition at the end of such a period, but as the chickens hatched from the eggs of fowls that have been so closely confined for even a few months are almost invariably less vigorous than those produced from fowls that live a more natural life, this plan is not much used except by those who keep a few fowls for their eggs only and renew the stock by purchase as often as necessary.

To give a flock of a dozen fowls outdoor air and exercise enough to keep them in good condition, a yard containing about 300 sq. ft. is necessary. There is no perceptible advantage in giving more yard room than this, unless the yard can be made so large that grass will grow continuously in the greater part of it. On most soils this would require a yard containing from 750 to 1000 sq. ft. in sod before being used for poultry.

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[9] The coop is an old dry-goods box; the shade is a burlap bag. Makeshift arrangements are not always nice looking, but some of the finest chickens are kept in very poor quarters.

When fowls are confined to their houses, or to the houses and small yards, the droppings must be removed at frequent, regular intervals. To facilitate this it is customary to have a wide board, called the droppings board, under the roost at a distance of eight or ten inches. All the droppings made while the birds are on the roost fall on this board and are easily collected and removed. It is a good plan to keep a supply of dry earth in a convenient place, and strew a little of this over the droppings board after each cleaning. Sifted coal ashes, land plaster, and dry sawdust are sometimes used instead of earth on the droppings boards. The droppings of fowls, when not mixed with other matter, are often salable for use in tanning leather, but in most cases the difference in their value for this purpose and for use as plant fertilizer is not great enough to pay for the extra trouble which is made by saving them for the tanners. Poultry manure is one of the most valuable fertilizers and can always be used to good advantage on lawns and gardens.

If the floor is of wood or of cement, a thin layer of earth or sand spread upon it makes it more comfortable for the fowls. On all kinds of floors the modern practice is to use a few inches of litter of some kind. There is a great variety of materials that will serve this purpose. Lawn clippings raked up after they are dry, dried weeds and grass from the garden, leaves collected when dry and stored to be used as wanted, straw, hay, cornstalks cut into short lengths, and shavings, such as are sold baled for bedding horses and cattle, are all good. Fresh litter should be added in small quantities about once a week. About once a month the coarse litter on top should be raked aside, and the fine litter mixed with droppings underneath removed. Once or twice a year all the material should be taken out and a fresh start made.

When kept in a house having an earth floor, fowls will scratch aside the litter from small spaces and wallow and dust themselves. In houses having hard floors, shallow boxes about 2 ft. square, containing several inches of dry earth, are placed for the birds' dust baths. Fresh earth must be provided frequently or they will not use the bath as freely as is desirable. For use in winter the earth must be so dry that it will not freeze, but the birds prefer earth that is slightly moist. The first function of the dust bath is to clean the feathers, and damp earth does this much better than earth that is very dry. In wallowing to clean their plumage fowls also rid themselves of lice. When it is not convenient to store much earth, the same material may do double service--first in the dust bath, then on the droppings board.

In a bare yard the soil should be turned over often, all the matter that can be raked up with a fine rake having first been removed. A yard that is in grass requires little care except near the house, where the ground may be bare. Here it should be forked over occasionally.

=Feeding.= The feeding of a small flock of fowls is a very simple process. The table and kitchen waste of an ordinary family will furnish all the soft food that they need, and usually enough green food to prevent their suffering for lack of such foods if no other provision is made for supplying them. This waste should not be carried from the house as it is made, and thrown on the ground for the fowls to pick out of the dirt. A better way is to provide a covered jar large enough to hold the accumulation of this material for a day. Into this may be put all the leavings from the table, except such things as orange and banana peelings, large bones, and pieces of fat meat. Once a day, at whatever time is most convenient, the contents of the jar should be mixed with as much corn meal and bran (equal parts by measure) as will take up the water in them and make a moist but not sloppy mash. This should be fed in a clean trough. If the trough stands high enough from the floor to keep the contents clean, it will do no harm if more food is given than the birds will eat up at once, but the quantity given should never be so great that it will not be eaten before the next feeding time.

Most people find the morning the most convenient time to give the mash. If the mash is fed in the morning, a small feed of hard grain should be given about noon, and a more liberal one an hour or two before sunset. Some poultry keepers feed the different grains separately; others mix them before feeding. Advocates of different practices often imagine advantages for that which they favor, but no advantage can be demonstrated for either. Wheat and cracked corn are the grains most used in this country; they are about equal in feeding value. As corn is nearly always cheaper than wheat, the usual practice is to feed about twice as much corn. When the grains are mixed, one part (by measure) of wheat is used to two parts of cracked corn. When they are fed separately, it is usual to feed the wheat at noon, as the light feed, and the corn in the evening, as the heavy feed. All the common grains except rye make good poultry foods. Why fowls do not like rye is one of the puzzles of poultry keeping. In some countries it is used for poultry to a greater extent than in the United States, and fowls forced to eat it here have done very well for short periods, but will not eat it readily if they are accustomed to other grains and can get enough to sustain life without it. Fowls do not like dry oats so well as corn and wheat, but have not such a dislike for them as for rye. They are very fond of oats soaked in water and partly sprouted.

POULTRY HOUSE USED AT THE CENTRAL EXPERIMENT STATION, OTTAWA, CANADA. (Photograph from the station)

The quantity of grain to be given any flock of fowls must be determined by trial and observation. The grain should not be fed in troughs from which the birds can eat it very quickly, but scattered in the litter on the floor, so that the fowls will take exercise scratching it out, and eat slowly. There is an advantage in giving some soft and quickly digested food, but if too much of the food can be eaten quickly, the birds do not take exercise enough. When there is grass in the poultry yard, it is a good plan to scatter the grain in the grass sometimes in fine weather. The hens will find it all, and in scratching it out will bring up the dead grass, and a better sod will grow afterward.

A dozen medium-sized fowls, if fed in the morning with the mash described above, would probably need a little over a pint of grain in the middle of the day and about a quart toward evening. An experienced feeder can usually tell by the eagerness of the fowls for their food whether to increase or diminish the quantity; but the most expert poultry keeper does not rely upon this kind of observation alone. Occasionally, before giving food, he looks in the litter to see if there is grain left there from previous feedings, and if he finds much, gives no more until the birds have eaten this all up clean.

Water should be given as often as is necessary to keep the supply quite fresh. In cool (but not freezing) weather, once a day is usually sufficient. In hot weather the water should be fresh two or three times a day, in order that the birds may have cool drinks. In freezing weather many poultry keepers give the water warm, because then it does not freeze so quickly. The advantage of this is very slight, and wattles that are wet with warm water in extreme cold weather become especially susceptible to frost. It is not really necessary to give fowls water when they can get snow or ice in a form in which they can eat it.

Hens that are laying must be well supplied with oyster shells or lime in some form for the shells of the eggs. They can get a part of the lime required for this purpose from the lime in foodstuffs, but not nearly enough to make good thick shells for all their eggs when they are laying well. Ground oyster shells are sold by all dealers in poultry supplies.

=Growing chickens.= Where old fowls have to be kept in close confinement, very little can be done in growing chickens. Some amateur poultry keepers raise in small, bare yards birds that are as good as the average chickens grown under more favorable conditions, but where one succeeds in doing this a hundred fail. Most of the chickens grown in close quarters are very poor indeed in comparison with farm-grown chickens, and quite unfit to be kept for laying or breeding purposes. Those who succeed in growing good chickens in a small place usually give a great deal more time to the work than the chickens produced are worth. The best way for a poultry keeper so situated to get as much as possible of the pleasure of this interesting line of work is to hatch a few broods and, when the chicks are large enough, broil, eat, or sell all but a few of the best pullets and one or two cockerels. If these thrive, they may be worth keeping for a year; but if, as they mature, they do not seem rugged, it is not wise to use them for laying stock.

Where there is room to give young chickens a good grass yard, a limited number can be grown to maturity year after year on a town lot and used for laying and breeding purposes. Many town poultry keepers who might grow a few very good chickens never grow a good one because they always try to raise too many for the space at their disposal. Fifty or a hundred chickens may be kept until two months old on a plot of land only large enough to carry twelve or fifteen to maturity. So people start out with a great many more chickens than they ought to have on their land, never thinking that the better their chickens do at the start the sooner they will begin to overcrowd their quarters, and that when that stage is reached, the promising results of several months' work may in a few days be ruined beyond remedy. After they are two or three months old, young chickens will not make the best growth of which they are capable unless they have either a great deal of room or a great deal more care than most people who raise only a few, and have other work to do, can afford to give them.

SMALL FLOCKS ON ORDINARY FARMS

=Numbers in flocks.= The ordinary farm flock consists of from fifty to one hundred adult fowls and, during the growing season, from one hundred to two hundred chickens. The old stock is usually kept in one or more small houses located among the other outbuildings, and all run together during the day. If the farmer wants to keep the fowls out of the dooryard and the kitchen garden, he does not make yards for the fowls, but incloses the dooryard and garden. Outside of these the birds go where they please. The coops for the young chickens are often kept in the dooryard or the garden until the chickens are weaned, but after that the young birds are nearly always turned out to take their chances with the old ones.

Under such conditions a farm flock is not often very productive, yet, as the birds secure a large part of their food by foraging, the flock may be more profitable than a more productive flock for which all food is bought and upon which a great deal of labor is expended. While this way of keeping fowls on farms is not in itself commendable, it is not to be altogether condemned, because circumstances often compel the farmer to treat his fowls as a sort of volunteer or self-producing crop. The conditions on a farm admit of this, and as a matter of fact the greater part of our enormous total production of eggs and poultry comes from the half-neglected flocks on the ordinary farms. Hence the conditions are tolerable where they are necessary, but whenever it is possible to give farm fowls enough attention to obviate the faults of common practice, the product and the profits can be greatly increased with very little increase in the cost of production. In this section we consider the best methods of securing this result when all the old stock is to be kept as one flock. Old stock and young ought always to be separated unless the old birds constitute an insignificant portion of the flock.

=Single houses for farm flocks.= It is as true on a farm as elsewhere that the greatest yields of eggs and the best growth in young birds are secured when the flock is divided into small groups. But a farm flock of the class under consideration, while it makes its headquarters in such buildings as may be provided, will forage a considerable distance in every direction, going among growing crops from which the larger farm animals must be excluded, and also following the larger animals in their stables, yards, and pastures and picking up food left by them. As fowls also eat many weeds and seeds of weeds, and all kinds of destructive insects, the advantages of letting them run at large more than make up for lower production. Also the production is normal and can be easily maintained from year to year in the same line of stock, while high production secured by extra care is forced and can be maintained in the same line of stock for only a few generations. A flock of one hundred fowls or less, that run together, may all be kept in one house just as well as in several, if the size of the house and the equipment are in proportion to the size of the flock.

If the snow lies long on the ground, so that the fowls are confined to the house much of the time in winter, the allowance of floor space should be about 5 sq. ft. per bird. Where the snow rarely lies more than a day or two at a time, less space may be given, because the birds will not occupy the house much of the time during the day. Under such conditions the allowance of floor space may be as low as 3 sq. ft. per bird. Those who go to this limit, however, should consider that, in the unusual case of a snowstorm keeping the hens confined to the house for more than a very few days, overcrowding may cause losses that more than offset what was gained by using the highest capacity of the house.

Usually a flock of fifty hens needs a house with a floor surface of about 250 sq. ft. This is obtained in a house 16 ft. square or in a house 12 ft. x 24 ft. A house 20 ft. square is about right for seventy-five or eighty hens, and is not badly overcrowded if one hundred medium-sized birds are put into it. If an oblong building is preferred, a house 12 ft. wide by 42 ft. long gives one hundred birds 5 sq. ft. of floor space per bird. Houses of such size should be from 4 ft. to 7 ft. high at the sides, and from 7 ft. to 10 ft. high at the highest point of the roof, according to the style of construction.

=Feeding.= In the feeding of a farm flock the first thing to consider is what the birds can pick up by foraging. The poultry keeper on a farm, even more than the poultry keeper elsewhere, should make it a rule to do nothing for poultry that they can do for themselves. Fowls can do more for themselves at some seasons than at others, because natural food is more abundant. As fowls do not usually go very far from their house, the larger the flock the less food each bird will secure. On some farms quite a large flock of fowls can get all the food they need about the barns and stockyards and in orchards and fields near the homestead.

(Photograph from the college)]

[10] In this house the part of the rear wall above the roost platform is made to open wide, thus affording perfect ventilation in summer.

When the conditions are such that it may reasonably be supposed that the fowls can get all the food they require without going farther than fowls usually wander, the best way to determine whether this supposition is correct is to give them no food until evening, then throw out a little grain and see how much they will eat. If it appears that they need to be fed a considerable quantity, it is better to give a light feed in the morning and another in the evening than to give a heavy feed once a day, because if they learn to expect a full feed at a regular time, they will not forage so well. Fowls that have an opportunity to secure considerable food by foraging should never be fed so much in the morning that they will sit around for hours. When hens on a farm need only one or two light feeds a day, whatever grain is most convenient may be given them. Where they get so much exercise and a good variety of other foods, whole corn is as good as anything. A good way to feed it is to break the ears into short pieces and let the birds pick the grain from the cob.

In winter the feeding of the farm flock should have more attention, especially if little food can be secured around the stables and stockyards. It is a good plan to give, once a day, a warm mash made of 1 part (by measure) of corn meal and 2 parts of bran, and to give as much grain at one other feeding as the hens will eat. Some farmers use sheaf oats for litter in the floors of their poultry houses, throwing in a sheaf or two as often as is necessary to keep a good depth of litter on the floor, and then give as much corn in addition as the hens will eat readily.

If it is not convenient to make a mash, what grain the fowls will eat quickly from a trough may be prepared for a warm breakfast for them by pouring boiling water on it in the evening and letting it soak overnight. Any of the small grains and cracked corn may be fed in this way; whole corn needs longer soaking. In hard, freezing weather no more mash or soaked grain should be given than the fowls will eat before it can freeze. A favorite old-time practice still used on many farms is to heat shelled corn in the oven and feed it while warm.

The best vegetable foods for fowls in winter are cabbages and mangel-wurzels. The cabbages can be hung up by the roots and the fowls will eat all but the stump. The most convenient way to feed the beets is to split them and impale the pieces on spikes in the wall at a convenient distance from the floor. Sound, sweet turnips are also good, but bitter turnips and those that have begun to spoil are likely to give an unpleasant flavor to the eggs. A little freezing does not seem to affect the value of these vegetables for poultry food, and the birds will usually eat them when frozen. The quantity fed at one time, however, should not be so large that it may freeze and thaw several times before it is all eaten.

When hogs and cattle are killed on a farm, the blood and other offal, and the small trimmings when the carcasses are cut up, should be saved and fed to the fowls regularly in moderate quantities, but care should be taken not to leave fat trimmings where the fowls can help themselves, for if fowls have been short of animal food, they eat meat very greedily and are often made sick by it. Blood and lean meat are not very injurious, but too much fat meat has very bad effects.

ANOTHER STYLE OF MOVABLE HOUSE AT THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT FARM, BELTSVILLE, MARYLAND. (Photograph from Bureau of Animal Industry)

It is not necessary to give the fowls water when there is snow on the ground. Delicate fowls that are accustomed to close confinement may not be able to stand running out on the snow, but if they have a comfortable house, with a good supply of litter on the floor, and are free to go and come at will, rugged birds that are out in all kinds of weather are not in the least hurt by going out on snow and ice and wet ground in cold weather, and will usually take snow in preference to water when they can get it. When the ground is bare and frozen, water or finely chipped ice should be supplied. In extreme cold weather the latter is better, because the water soon freezes and the fowls go thirsty until a fresh supply is given them.

=Reproducing the flock.= Fowls are short-lived creatures. They mature in less than a year; their period of greatest productiveness is usually over before they are two years old, and only a very small proportion of a flock are worth keeping after that. Hence the entire stock of fowls on a farm is renewed in two years. Most farmers intend to kill off all their two-year-old hens each year, thus keeping up the number in the flock by growing annually about as many young birds as there are hens in the flock. To allow for losses, for an excess of males, and for inferior pullets which are not worth keeping for layers, it is necessary to hatch about four times as many chickens as are to be reserved.

=The hatching season.= Most of the chickens reared on farms are hatched in the spring months. The late-hatched chickens are nearly all from hens that steal their nests. People on farms do not want late chickens; among so many larger ones a few small birds have very little chance to make good growth. But those who have a place to keep a few early chickens and time to take care of them often set a few hens in the winter. Eggs will hatch at any season of the year, and chickens will grow if they get proper care; but there is a comparatively short season in the spring when eggs hatch better and chickens grow better than at any other time, and the easiest way to get a given number of good chickens that will be full-grown at the beginning of winter is to hatch them in this natural hatching season. This season cannot be exactly defined, because it varies according to latitude and also from year to year according to the weather. Perhaps the best general rule is to have the first chicks hatch when the grass is beginning to grow. To effect this the hens must be set three weeks earlier, when there may be no signs of spring. No one can time hatches to a natural phenomenon of this kind with certainty, but by planning with reference to the advance of spring in a normal season, the first hatches are usually brought very near to the desired time.

=Broody hens.= When a hen wants to incubate eggs, or, as the common phrase is, to sit, she remains on her nest continuously and, unless very shy, will not leave it when approached and will resent any interference. The hen is then said to be broody. Because the broody hen makes a clucking noise, she is sometimes called a clucking hen. Hens that are shy when they begin to cluck, and that fly from the nest when approached, usually become tame and allow themselves to be handled after a few days. Broody hens cannot always be obtained at the time they are wanted. In that case there is nothing to do but wait, or try to buy, hire, or borrow them. There is no way of forcing or inducing hens to become broody before they would do so of their own accord. When broody hens are hard to get, people think that hatching with incubators will relieve them of trouble and prevent delay, but the incubator, too, has its uncertainties. Success in artificial hatching requires careful attention to the operation of the incubator and good judgment in adjusting and regulating it.

=Setting the hens.= As many broody hens as can be obtained should be set at the same time. The most convenient style of nest is that shown in Figs. 91 and 92, which can be kept closed if desired. The best nest material is soft hay or straw. In preparing the nest a poultry keeper shapes the nest material with his hand, to give it a bowl shape, pressing it down to make a smooth, firm surface upon which the eggs will lie evenly. It is a good plan to make the nests and place the hens in them, giving to each a few China nest eggs two or three days before the eggs that are to be hatched are given to them. The eggs for hatching should be of good size and shape, with good strong shells, and as uniform in color as can be obtained. The usual number of eggs placed under a hen is thirteen. After the weather becomes warm, even a small hen will cover thirteen eggs well, and medium-sized hens will cover fifteen or sixteen eggs and often hatch every one, but early in the season it is better to give a hen eleven eggs or perhaps only nine. The number of eggs given a hen is almost always an odd number. There is an old superstition that an even number will not hatch. The reason commonly given by writers on poultry is that an odd number of eggs arrange in better form in the nest, but this is mere fancy. However the practice started, the real reason why odd numbers of eggs are placed in nests of sitting hens now is that the custom is so well established, and the habit of thinking of eggs for hatching in odd numbers is so strong, that most poultry keepers do it unconsciously.

=Care of sitting hens.= The best food for sitting hens is whole corn. As the hen will leave the nest only once a day, and not always daily unless removed, the food is given in a vessel from which she can eat it readily. The usual way is to keep a supply where the hens are, so that whenever they leave the nest they can get something to eat. Whether to let them choose their own time to leave the nest or to keep the nests closed except when they are let off at a regular time each day is a point to be determined in each case according to the circumstances. If all the hens in the same place are quiet and get along well together and do not quarrel for the possession of particular nests, they may be left very much to themselves; otherwise the poultry keeper should regulate things so that there will be no quarreling and no danger of a nest of eggs getting cold while two hens crowd on another nest and break some of the eggs in it.

Besides grain the hens need water and a place to dust. Most sitting hens will dust themselves every time they leave the nest, if they have an opportunity to do so. As lice multiply rapidly on sitting hens, it is a good idea, even when the hen can dust herself, to apply an insect powder to her and to the nest two or three times during the period of incubation.

The eggs may be tested at the end of the seventh day by using a light, as described on page 21. While fertility can be determined earlier, waiting until the seventh day enables one to tell more surely whether fertility is strong or weak, and to discard weak germs as well as infertile eggs. An infertile egg is clear, that is, shows no signs of development or decay, at every period of incubation. The eggs that rot are fertile eggs in which the germs have died. A rotten egg is distinguished from a fertile egg through the tester by the movement of the line between the transparent air space at the large end of the egg and the dark contents, this movement showing that the contents are in a fluid state. The eggs which are the most opaque and have the air space most distinctly marked are those which have the strongest germs. Eggs that are conspicuously light-colored (as they appear before the light) when compared with these may as well be discarded. If many eggs are discarded, those that remain may be given to a part of the hens, and the rest of the hens reset.

=Attention at hatching time.= The eggs of medium-sized fowls usually hatch in from twenty to twenty-one days. The eggs of small fowls take about a day less, and those of large fowls about a day more. Hens' eggs have been known to hatch as early as the seventeenth day and as late as the twenty-fourth, but as a rule chickens that come before the nineteenth day or after the twenty-second are weakly. Hens sometimes trample the chickens in the nests or crush the eggs after they are picked, so that the chicken cannot turn to break the shell in the regular manner. Sometimes this is due to the nervousness or to the clumsiness of the hen, but oftener it is caused by the nest being too much dished (that is, hollowed so much that the eggs tend to roll toward the center) or by lice disturbing her. The chickens may be saved either by removing them to other broody hens or by putting them in a flannel wrapping in a warm place. Unless, however, the conditions are bad, it is better to leave them with the hen. Hens with little chicks should be left in the nests until all the eggs that will hatch have hatched and the chicks are dry and begin to show an inclination to run about. Then, if the weather is fine, the hen and her brood may be taken at once to a coop out of doors, but if it is cold or stormy, the little chicks are better indoors.

=Coops for broods.= The coop for a hen and chickens should be so constructed that they will have plenty of fresh air at night. There should be a small run attached to it, to which the hen can be confined while the chickens run about or come to her to be brooded, as they may wish. It is not a good plan to let a hen run with her brood while the chicks are very small. The chickens do much better if the mother is confined and gives more attention to keeping them warm than to feeding them. The coops should not be placed in the same spot year after year, nor should they be on land upon which the old fowls run during any considerable portion of the year. Sod ground is best.

=Feeding young chickens.= From early times in America the most common food for young chickens has been corn meal moistened with water. When fresh this is a good food for chickens that run about and eat a great deal of green food, insects, worms, and small seeds, but a mash of scalded corn meal and bran, such as is given old fowls, or a baked johnnycake, is better. There is no need of fussing with such foods as finely chopped hard-boiled eggs, cracker crumbs, pinhead oatmeal, and other things often recommended as most appropriate for the first feeds of little chicks. Healthy hen-hatched chicks raised by the natural method on a farm need nothing but one soft feed (such as has been mentioned) in the morning, a little hard grain toward evening, and then, just before dark, all the soft food they will eat. The best grain for them is sound cracked corn; the next best is wheat. The chickens should have good water always before them, and may be given all the milk they want. Skim milk, sour milk (either thin or clabbered), and buttermilk are all eaten with relish and promote health and growth. Vessels in which milk is given must be cleaned often or they will become very filthy.

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[11] Burlap bags are used to shade the interior or to keep out rain. When not in use they are turned back on the top of the coop.

=Management of growing chicks.= Of course, healthy chickens are growing all the time, and growing at a very rapid rate, too; but after the chicks are weaned, they have usually reached the point in growth when the increase in size in a short period is very noticeable. So poultry keepers commonly speak of chickens from weaning time until maturity as growing chicks. At this time the rudest kind of shelter will suit them as well as any. Indeed, they hardly need shelter from the weather at all. The most essential things are a good range, apart from the old fowls, and an abundance of food. They should be able to pick up a great deal of food for themselves, but should have enough given them to make sure that they always have all the food they can eat. It does not pay to stint them to make them forage farther. Young chickens will always take all the exercise that they need if they have the opportunity, and the more they eat the better they grow.

When the range near their coops ceases to afford them good picking, the coops should be moved to a place where the food to be secured by foraging is more abundant.

LARGE STOCKS ON GENERAL FARMS

When farmers in America began to keep larger stocks of fowls, the most common practice nearly everywhere was to increase the general flock until there were far too many fowls on the land that they would usually forage over. Under such conditions fowls on the farm were not profitable. They damaged every crop to which they had access, and made the farm most unsightly in the vicinity of the dwelling house. Then some farmers would reduce the flock and return to the old practice of keeping only a few dozen hens, while others would adopt the city plan of building houses with many compartments and keeping the fowls yarded in small flocks. This plan was usually abandoned within a few years, because, while it worked very well in the winter, when the farmer had time to give the hens extra care, they were not as well off in the summer, when the farmer had to give attention to his field crops first. Such was the usual course of development of farm methods of managing fowls.

=The colony system.= But occasionally a farmer whose flock had outgrown its accommodations as one flock would divide it, moving a part to another place on the farm, and so was able to maintain the increase in numbers without adopting laborious methods. This idea was carried out most systematically and most extensively in the vicinity of Little Compton, Rhode Island, where the Rhode Island Red fowl originated. The first settlers in this part of Rhode Island built large stone poultry houses like that shown in Fig. 98. Some of these old buildings are still used for poultry. This district is most favorably situated for poultry keeping. The snow rarely lies long, and the birds can be outdoors nearly every day in winter as well as in summer. Being near the fashionable summer resort of Newport, the farmers here early found a large demand for their eggs and poultry at high prices in the summer time, when in many places the prices were low. Then in the winter they could send eggs to Boston and Providence, which were the best markets in the country for this class of produce. So these farmers had every inducement to devise a practical method of indefinitely increasing their stocks of fowls. The plan which they adopted was very simple. Small houses, which could easily be moved from place to place with a two-horse team, and which would accommodate from twenty-five to thirty-five fowls, were made and distributed over the farm. Sometimes these houses were placed in pastures not suitable for mowing or for cultivation and remained there permanently, but as a rule they were moved from time to time to suit the rotation of crops on the farm. As the number of these houses on a farm increased, and they were spread over a larger area and sometimes placed in fields and pastures a long distance from the farmhouse, the work of caring for the fowls, even by the simple method used, became too heavy to be done by man power alone, and a horse and cart was used in carrying food and water, collecting eggs, and moving chicks and fowls from one part of the farm to another. Thus the work was put on a very economical basis, and keeping fowls by this method became a common feature of the farming of this section of Rhode Island. The methods used here have changed little, if at all, since the system was started sixty or seventy years ago. The system is so primitive that people who are familiar with more elaborate methods often imagine that the Rhode Island farmer, who does so well by his simple methods, would certainly do very much better if he applied more of the modern ideas. But the test of time has demonstrated that this simple colony system is easily made permanent, while most of the more ambitious and complex systems either fail utterly or have but a transient success.

=Numbers of hens kept.= The number of hens kept on a farm in this section varies from four or five hundred to over two thousand. Stocks of from eight hundred to twelve hundred are most common. The principal object is to produce market eggs, but as the two-year-old hens and the cockerels that are not needed for breeding purposes are sold every year, the receipts from the sale of live poultry are sometimes considerable.

=Feeding, care, and results.= The hens, being well distributed over the farm, pick a large part of their living. Hard grain (usually cracked corn) is kept always before them in the house, in hoppers which will hold a bag of grain each. Once a day, in the morning, the hens are given a feed of mash (or, as it is called in this locality, dough) of about the same composition as the mash described on page 89. The dough is cooked in a large iron set-kettle in the evening and left there until it is to be fed the next morning. Then it is loaded into boxes or large tubs on a cart. The cart also carries a barrel of water. As he reaches each house the driver, with a shovel, throws what dough the hens need on the grass near the house. Then he fills the water pail and drives on to the next house. The hens require no more attention until evening, when the man collects the eggs and gives more water where it is necessary.

Some of the smaller stocks of fowls on these farms--flocks that have been selected with care and are given a little more attention than is usual--give an average annual production of eleven or twelve dozen eggs a hen, but the general average is only eight or nine dozen. Although the profit per hen is small, the compensation for labor and investment is better than on most poultry plants where a much greater product per hen is secured. Even when eggs are the most important money crop on the farm, the care of the laying hens is but a small part of the day's work of the man who looks after them.

=How the chickens are grown.= The number of chickens reared each year on one of these colony farms is usually about equal to the number of fowls kept. Where there are so many hens of a sitting variety, and very early hatching is not practiced, there is rarely any shortage of sitting hens at the time when they are wanted. Usually twenty or thirty hens are set at the same time, and it is expected that they will hatch eight or ten chickens each. Sometimes sixty or seventy hens are set at one time. As it is almost always quite warm when the chickens are hatched, it is customary to give each hen twenty or more chickens. The coops are placed in rows, several rods apart each way, on a piece of grassland that has had no poultry on it for a year or more. Most of the farmers are very particular on this point, and prefer to put the young chickens on land on which there has been no poultry for at least two years. They have learned by experience that under such conditions they can rear a much larger percentage of the chickens hatched, and that the chickens will grow more evenly and mature earlier. In planning the field crops grown on the farm they always try to arrange so that the small chickens may have fresh land not too far from the farmhouse; land seeded to grass the year before is best.

The chickens are fed the same dough as is given to the hens, but are fed oftener. They have a second meal of dough about noon, and their grain supply, which is given in small troughs, is replenished frequently. While the hens are with the chickens the food is placed where the hen confined to the coop can get her share. After the hens are taken away, the dough is thrown on the grass as the cart passes up and down the rows of coops.

When the hay has been harvested and the corn has grown tall, a part of the young chickens may be removed from the land where they were started, and the coops placed where they can forage on mowing lands, in cornfields, and wherever they can go without damage to a growing crop. As they become too crowded in the small coops, the cockerels are sold and, if there are still too many birds in a coop, a few pullets are taken from each of the overcrowded coops and new colonies are started, so far from their old associates that they will not find their way back.

In the early fall as many of the oldest hens are sold as is necessary to vacate the houses needed for the pullets reared that season. Then the houses are thoroughly cleaned. (They may not have been cleaned before for six months or a year.) If a house is to be moved to a new location, the change is usually made at this time. One or two cartloads of clean sand are put into each house, to make the floor higher than the ground outside and to provide an absorbent for the droppings which are allowed to accumulate. When they are brought to the house, which will probably be their home as long as they live, the pullets are confined to the house, or a small temporary yard is attached to it, so that they cannot wander away. After a few days of confinement they accept the new home as their headquarters.

=Adaptability of the colony system.= The colony system as developed in Rhode Island attracted little attention elsewhere until very recent years. Since about 1900 many descriptions of it have been published, and numerous efforts have been made to adapt features of this system to operations in other localities. The principal obstacles to this are snow and predacious animals. Where snow lies deep for months it is not practical to keep fowls in widely distributed flocks in winter. In some places the plan of distributing the houses in summer and parking them (that is, placing them close together in a regular order) in winter has worked very well. Where wild animals are numerous, colony methods cannot be extensively applied, but on most farms a limited application of the system will greatly increase the amount of poultry that can profitably be kept.

In England many farmers use smaller colony houses than those in use in Rhode Island, and move them often, not letting a house stand in the same spot long enough to kill the grass. Some of the houses used in this way are provided with small wheels. The advantage of moving houses often is greatest when the fowls are on good arable land, upon which there are, or will be, crops that can utilize the manure which the birds leave on the land. If the houses are moved methodically, the fertilizer will be evenly distributed.

INTENSIVE POULTRY FARMS

=Reasons for concentration.= In the early days of the poultry fancy in this country the tendency was for each fancier to keep as many different varieties as he could find room for or could afford to buy. Most of these fanciers were city people who thought that, as they kept their fowls in small flocks anyway, they might just as well have as many different kinds of poultry as they had separate compartments in their poultry yards. When rich men with large estates became interested in fancy poultry, they usually built large houses containing many small pens, each with its small yard, and bought a few of each known variety. By far the greater part of the choicest poultry was kept in small inclosures, and the flocks that laid remarkably well were usually city flocks that were given good care. This seemed to a great many people to prove that fowls did not need the room and the freedom which for ages they had enjoyed on farms, and that the limit of the possible extension of the city method of keeping fowls in small, bare yards depended in any case upon the business capacity of the poultry keeper.

=Concentration not profitable.= Very few people who have not had experience in growing large numbers of poultry under both good and bad conditions can be made to understand how futile industry and business methods are when many other things which affect results are unfavorable. Even when the obstacles to the application of intensive methods on a large scale are pointed out to them, most novices imagine that the difficulties are exaggerated for the purpose of discouraging them. They think that the successful poultry keeper wishes to discourage competition, and that the person who has failed does not want to see any one else succeed, and so warns others to let such projects alone. Those who have been very successful in their first efforts in a small way seldom lack perfect confidence in their ability to make good on any scale if once they are in a position to devote themselves entirely to this work.