The Dollar Hen Part 28

The best way to feed beef-sc.r.a.p is to keep a supply in the hopper so the chickens may help themselves. In case meat food is given, bone-meal, fed in small quant.i.ties, will form a valuable addition to their ration. Infertile eggs from incubators, as well as by-products of the dairy, can be used to help out in the animal-food portion of the ration. Chickens may be given all the milk they will drink. It is generally recommended that this be given clabbered.

Feeding Laying Hens.

The food requirements of a laying hen are very like those of a growing chicken. One addition to the list is, however, required for egg production, which is lime, of which the sh.e.l.l of the egg is formed. In the summer-time hens on the range will find sufficient lime to supply their needs. In the winter-time they should be supplied with more lime than the food contains. Crushed oyster sh.e.l.l answers the purpose admirably.

A supply of green food is one of the requisites of successful winter feeding. Every farmer should see that a patch of rye, crimson clover, or some other winter green crop is grown near his chicken-house. Vegetables and refuse from the kitchen help out in this matter, but seldom furnish a sufficient supply. Vegetables may be grown for this purpose. Mangels and sugar-beets are excellent.

Cabbage, potatoes and turnips answer the purpose fairly well.

Mangels are fed by splitting in halves and sticking to nails driven in the wall.

Clover and alfalfa are excellent chicken feeds and should be used in regions where winter crops will not keep green. The leaves that shatter off in the mow are the choicest portion for chicken feeding, and may be fed by scalding with hot water and mixing in a mash. Hens will eat good green alfalfa if fed dry in a box.

The feeding of sprouted oats should be practiced when no other green food is available. Oats may be prepared for this purpose by thoroughly soaking in warm water and being kept in a warm, damp place for a few days. Feed when the sprouts are a couple of inches long.

Almost all grains are suitable foods for hens. Corn, on account of its cheapness and general distribution, is the best. The general prejudice against corn feeding should be directed rather against feeding one grain alone without the other forms of food. If hens are supplied with green foods, with mineral matter, some form of meat food, and are forced to take sufficient amount of exercise, the danger from overfatness, due to the feeding of a reasonable amount of corn, need not be feared.

As has already been emphasized, the variety of food given is more essential than the kind. Do not feed one grain all the time. The more variety fed the better. Corn and Kaffir-corn, being cheap grains, will form the major portion of the ration, but, even if much higher in price, it will pay to add a portion of such grain as wheat, barley, oats or buckwheat.

Cleanliness.

The advice commonly given in poultry papers would require one to exercise nearly as much pains in the cleaning of a chicken house as in the cleaning of a kitchen. Such advice may be suitable for the city poultry fanciers, but it is out of place when given to the farmer. Poultry raising, the same as other farm work, must pay for the labor put into it, and this will not be the case if attempt is made to follow all the suggestions of the theoretical poultry writer.

The ease with which the premises may be kept reasonably free from litter and filth is largely a matter of convenient arrangement. The handiest plan from this view-point is the colony system. In this the houses are moved to new locations when the ground becomes soiled. If the chicken-house is a stationary structure it should be built away from other buildings, sc.r.a.p-piles, fence corners, etc., so that the ground can be frequently freshened by plowing and sowing in oats, rye or rape. The ground should be well sloped, so that the water draining from the surface may wash away much of the filth that on level ground would acc.u.mulate.

Cleanliness indoors can be simplified by proper arrangement. First, the house must be dry. Poultry droppings, when dry, are not a source of danger if kept out of the feed. They should be removed often enough to prevent foul odors. Drinking vessels should be rinsed out when refilled and not allowed to acc.u.mulate a coat of slime. If a mash is fed, feed-boards should be sc.r.a.ped off and dried in the sun.

Suns.h.i.+ne is a cheap and efficient disinfectant.

The advice on the control of lice and the method of handling sick chickens that has been given in the main section of the book, will apply as well on the farm as on the commercial poultry plant.

Certainly the farmer's time is too valuable to fool with the details of poultry therapeutics.

Farm Chicken Houses.

The following notes on poultry houses apply to Iowa and Nebraska, where the winters are severe, and similar climates. Farther south and east the farmer should use the same style of houses as recommended for egg farms. A chicken house just high enough for a man to walk erectly and a floor s.p.a.ce of about 3 square feet per hen is advisable. This requires a house 12 by 24 for 100 hens, or 10 by 16 for 50.

Lands sloping to south or southeast, and that which dries quickly after a rain, will prove the most suitable for chickens. A gumbo patch should not be selected as a location for poultry. Hogs and hens should not occupy the same quarters, in fact, should be some distance apart, especially if heavy breeds of chickens are kept.

Hens should be removed from the garden, but may be near an orchard.

Chicken-houses should be separated from tool-houses, stables, and other outbuildings.

Grading for chicken-houses is not commonly practiced, but this is the easiest means of preventing dampness in the house and is necessary in heavy soils. The ground-level may be raised with a plow and sc.r.a.per, or the foundation of the house may be built and filled with dirt.

A stone foundation is best, but where stone is expensive may be replaced by cedar, hemlock or Osage orange posts, deeply set in the ground. Small houses can be built on runners as described for colony houses for an egg farm.

Floors are commonly constructed of earth, boards or cement. Cement floors are perfectly sanitary and easy to keep clean. The objections to their common use is the first cost of good cement floors. Cheaply constructed floors will not last. Board floors are very common and are preferred by many poultrymen, but if close to the ground they harbor rats, while if open underneath they make the house cold.

Covering wet ground by a board floor does not remedy the fault of dampness nearly so effectually as would a similar expenditure spent in raising the floor and surrounding ground by grading. All things considered, the dirt floor is the most suitable. This should be made by filling in above the outside ground-level. The drainage will be facilitated if the first layer of this floor be of cinders, small rocks or other coa.r.s.e material. Above this layer should be placed a layer of clay, wet and packed hard, so the hens cannot scratch it up, or a different plan may be used and the floor constructed of a sandy or loamy soil of which the top layer can be renewed each year.

The walls of a chicken-house must first of all be wind-tight. This may be attained in several ways. Upright boards with cracks battened is the cheapest method. Various kinds of lap-siding give similar results. The single-board wall may be greatly improved by lining with building-paper. This should be put on between the studding and siding. Lath should also be used to prevent the paper bagging out from the wall. The double-board wall is the best where a warm house is desired.

It should be made by siding up outside the studding with cheap lumber. On this is placed a layer of roofing paper and over it the ordinary siding. The windows of a chicken-house should furnish sufficient light that the hens may find grain in the litter on cloudy days. Too much gla.s.s in a poultry house makes the house cold at night, and it is a needless expenditure.

The subject of roofing farm buildings may be summarized in this advice: Use patent roofing if you know of a variety that will last; if not, use s.h.i.+ngles. s.h.i.+ngle roofs require a steeper pitch than do roofs of prepared roofing. A s.h.i.+ngle roof can be made much warmer by using tightly laid sheathing covered with building-paper. Especial care should be taken that the joints at the eaves of the house are tightly fitted.

The object of ventilating a chicken-house is to supply a reasonable amount of fresh air, and, equally important, to keep the house dry.

Ventilation should not be by cracks or open cupolas. Direct drafts of air are injurious, and ventilation by such means is always the greatest when the least needed.

Schemes of ventilation by a system of pipes are expensive and unnecessary. The latest, best and cheapest plan for providing ventilation is the curtain front house for the north, and the open front house for the more southerly sections. The curtain front house is giving way to the open front with a somewhat smaller opening in sections, as far north as Connecticut.

Make all roosts on the same level. The ladder arrangement is a nuisance and offers no advantage. Arrange the roosts so that they may be readily removed for cleaning. Do not fill the chicken-house full of roosts. Put in only enough to accommodate the hens, and let these be on one side of the house. The floor under the roosts should be separated from the feeding floor by a board set on edge.

For laying flocks the nests must be clean, secluded and plentiful.

Boxes under the roost-platform will answer, but a better plan is to have the nest upon a shelf along a side wall so arranged as to allow the hen to enter from the rear side. Nests should be constructed so that all parts are accessible to a white-wash brush. The less contrivances in a chicken-house, the better.

The farmer can get along very well without any chicken-yard at all.

It will, however, prove a very convenient arrangement if a small yard is attached to the chicken-house. The house should be arranged to open either into the yard or out into the range. This yard may be used for fattening chickens or confining c.o.c.kerels, or perhaps to enclose the flock during the ripening of a favorite tomato or berry crop.

THE END.