The Dollar Hen Part 7

The Feeding System.

Oyster sh.e.l.ls, beef sc.r.a.ps, corn, and one other kind of grain, together with an abundance of pasturage or green feed, is the sum and substance of feeding hens on the Dollar Hen Farm.

The dry feeds are placed in hoppers. They are built to protect the feeds from the weather. The neck must be sufficiently large to prevent clogging, and the hopper so protected by slats in front that the hen cannot toss the feed out by a side jerk of her head. These hoppers may be built any size desired. The grain compartments should, of course, be made larger than the others. Weekly filling is good, but where a team is not owned, it would be better to have the hoppers larger so that feed purchased, say, once a month, could be delivered directly into the hoppers.

Water Systems.

The best water system is a spring-fed brook.

The man proposing to establish an individual poultry plant, and who after reading this book goes and buys a tract of land where an artificial water system is necessary, would catch Mississippi drift-wood on shares. But there are plenty of such people in the world. A man once stood all day on London Bridge hawking gold sovereigns at a s.h.i.+lling a-piece and did not make a sale.

Next to natural streams are the made streams. This is the logical watering method of the community of poultry farmers. These artificial streams are to be made by conducting the water of natural streams back of the land to be watered, as in irrigation. It is the problem of irrigation over again. Indeed, where trucking is combined with poultry-growing, fowl watering should be combined with irrigation.

It may be necessary to dam the stream to get head, sufficient supply or both. In sandy soils, ditches leak, and board flumes must be subst.i.tuted. The larger ones are made of the boards at right angles and tapered so that one end of one trough rests in the upper end of the next lower section. The smaller, or lateral troughs may be made V-shaped.

The cost of the smaller sized flume is three cents a foot. Iron pipe costs twelve cents a foot.

The greater the slope of the ground the smaller may be the troughs, but on ground where the slopes are great, more expense will be necessary in stilting the flumes to maintain the level, and the harder it will be to find a large section that can be brought under the ditch.

Fluming water for poultry is, like irrigation, a community project.

The greatest dominating people of history have their origin in arid countries. It was co-operate or starve, and they learned co-operation and conquered the earth. If a man interferes with the flume, or takes more than his share of the water, put him out. We are in the hen, not the hog business.

Community water systems, where water must be pumped and piped in iron pipe, is of course a more expensive undertaking. It will only pay where water is too deep for individuals to drive sand points on their own property. There is certainly little reason to consider an expensive method when there are abundant localities where simple plans may be used.

On sand lands, with water near the surface, each farmer may drive sand points and pump his water by hand. In this case running water is not possible, but the pipes or flumes may be arranged so that fresh pumping flushes all the drinking places and also leaves them full of standing water. The simplest way to arrange this will be by wooden surface troughs as used in the fluming scheme. The only difference is that an occasional section is made deeper so that it will retain water.

A more permanent arrangement may be made by using a line of three-fourths inch pipe. At each watering place the pipe is brought to the surface so that the water flows into a galvanized pan with sloping sides. This pan has an overflow through a short section of smaller tubing soldered to the side of the pan. The pipe line is parallel with the fence line, the pans supply both fields. By this arrangement the entire plant may be watered in a few minutes. The overflow tubes are on one side. Using these tubes as a pivot the pans may be swung out from under the fence with the foot and cleaned with an old broom. Where the ground water is deep a wind mill and storage tank would be desirable.

Outdoor Accommodations.

The hen house is a place for roosting, laying and a protection for the feed. The hen is to live out doors.

On the most successful New England poultry farms, warm houses for hens have been given up. Hens fare better out of doors in Virginia than they do in New England, but make more profit out of doors anywhere than they will shut up in houses. If your climate will not permit your hen to live out doors get out of the climate or get out of the hen business.

There is, however, a vast difference in the kind of out-of-doors.

The running stream with its fringe of trees, brush and rank growing gra.s.s, forms daylight quarters for the hen par excellence. Rank growing crops, fodder piled against the fences, a board fence on the north side of the lot, or little sheds made by propping a platform against a stake, will all help. A place out of the wind for the hens to dust and sun and be sociable is what is wanted, and what must be provided, preferably by Nature, if not by Nature then by the poultryman.

The hens are to be kept as much as possible out of the houses, in sheltered places among the crops or brush. They should not herd together in a few places but should be separated in little clumps well scattered over the land. These hiding places for the hens must, of course, not be too secluded or eggs will be lost.

Equipment for Chick Rearing.

Just as the long houses for hens have been weighed and found wanting, so larger brooder houses, with one exception, have never been established on what may be called a successful basis. By establishment on a successful basis, I mean established so that they could be used by larger numbers of people in rearing market chickens. There are plenty of large brooder houses in use, just as there are plenty of yarded poultry plants, but many intelligent, industrious people have tried both systems only to find that the cost of production exceeds the selling price. This makes us p.r.o.ne to believe that some of those who claim to be succeeding may differ from the crowd in that they had more capital to begin with and hence last longer.

The one exception I make to this is that of the South Sh.o.r.e Roaster District of Ma.s.sachusetts. Here steam-pipe brooder houses are used quite extensively. The logical reason that pipe brooder houses have found use in the winter chicken business and not in rearing pullets is that of season and profits. When chicks are to be hatched in the dead of winter the steam-heated brooder house is a necessity. In this limited use it is all right, where the profits per chick are great enough to stand the expense and losses.

For the rearing of the great bulk of spring chicks the methods that have proven profitable are as follows:

First: Rearing with hens as practiced at Little Compton. For suggestions on this see the chapter ent.i.tled "Poultry on the General Farm."

Second: Rearing with lamp brooder. Many large book-built poultry plants have been equipped with steam, or, more properly, hot water heated brooder houses, only to have a practical manager see that they did not work, tear out the piping and fill the house with rows of common lamp brooders. The advantage claimed for the lamp brooder is that they can be regulated separately for each flock. As a matter of fact, the same regulation for each flock of chicks could be secured with a proper type of hot water heaters and one of the most practical poultry farms in the country is now installing such a system.

A brooder system where hot air under the pressure of a blower or centrifugal fan would seem ideal. So far the efforts made along these lines have been clumsy and unnecessarily expensive. If the continuous house is ever made practical, I believe it will be along this line, but at present I advise sticking to the methods that are known to be successful.

Individual lamp brooders in colony houses are perhaps the most generally successful means of rearing chicks on northern poultry farms. They are troublesome and somewhat expensive, but with properly hatched chickens are more successful than hen rearing. In buying such a brooder the chief points to be observed are: A good lamp, a heating device giving off the heat from a central drum, and an arrangement which facilitates easy cleaning. The brooder should be large, having not less than nine square feet of floor s.p.a.ce. The work demanded of a brooder is not as exacting as with an incubator.

The heat and circulation of air may vary a little without harm, but they must not fail altogether. The greatest trouble with brooders in operation is the uncertainty of the lamp. The brooder-lamp should have sufficient oil capacity and a large wick. Brooder-lamps are often exposed to the wind, and, if cheaply constructed or poorly enclosed, the result will be a chilled brood of chicks, or perhaps a fire.

The chief thing sought in the internal arrangements of a brooder is a provision to keep the chicks from piling up and smothering each other as they crowd toward the source of heat. This can be accomplished by having the warmest part of the brooder in the center rather than at the side or corner. If the heat comes from above and a considerable portion of the brooder be heated to the same temperature, no crowding will take place.

The temperature given for running brooders vary with the machine and the position of the thermometer. The one reliable guide for temperature is the action of the chicks. If they are cold they will crowd toward the source of heat; if too warm they will wander uneasily about; but if the temperature is right, each chick will sleep stretched out on the floor. The cold chicken does not sleep at all, but puts in its time fighting its way toward the source of heat. In an improperly constructed or improperly run brooder the chicks go through a varying process of chilling, sweating and struggling when they should be sleeping, and the result is puny chicks that dwindle and die.

The arrangement of the brooder for the sleeping accommodations of the chicks is important, but this is not the only thing to be considered in a brooder. The brooder used in the early season, and especially the outdoor brooder, must have ample s.p.a.ce provided for the daytime accommodation of the chick. In the colony house brooder such s.p.a.ce will, of course, be the floor of the house.

When operating on a large scale it will not pay to buy complete brooders. The lamps and hovers can be purchased separately and installed in colony houses which do both for brooders and later for houses for growing young stock. The universal hover sold by the Prairie State Incubator people is about as perfect a lamp hover as can be made.

The cold brooder, or Philo box, as it has been popularly called, is the chief item in a system of poultry keeping that has been widely advertised. The principle of the Philo box is that of holding the air warmed by the chick down close to them by a sagging piece of cloth. The cloth checks most of the radiating heat, but is not so tight as to smother the chick. This limits the s.p.a.ce of air to be warmed by the chicks to such a degree that the body warmth is used to the greatest advantage. That chickens can be raised in these fire-less brooders, is not in question, for that has been abundantly proven, but most poultrymen believe that it will pay better, especially in the North, to give the little fellows a few weeks'

warmth.

Curtis Bros. at Ransomville, N.Y., who raise some twenty thousand chicks per year, have adopted the following system: The chicks are kept under hovers heated by hot water pipes for one week, or until they learn to hover. Then they are put in Philo boxes for a week in the same building but away from the pipes. The third week the Philo boxes are placed in a large, unheated room. After that they go to a large Philo box in a colony house.

To make a Philo house of the Curtis pattern, take a box 5 in. deep and 18 in. to 24 in. square. Cut a hole in one side for a chick door, run a strip of screen around the inside of the box to round the corners. Now take a second similar box. Tack a piece of cloth rather loosely across its open face. Bore a few augur holes in the sides of either box. Invert box No. 2 upon box No. 1. This we will call a Curtis box. It costs about fifteen cents and should accommodate fifty to seventy-five chicks.

A universal hover in a colony coop or colony house, for which a Curtis box is subst.i.tuted, as early in the game as the weather permits, is the method I advise for rearing young chicks. The lamp problem we still have with us, but it is one that cannot be easily solved. Large vessels or tanks of water which are regularly warmed by injection of steam from a movable boiler, offers a possible way out of the difficulty. On a plant large enough to keep one man continually at this work, this plan might be an improvement over filling lamps, but for the smaller plant it is lamps, or go south.

Rearing young chicks is the hardest part of the poultry business.

There is a lot of work about it that cannot be gotten rid of. Little chicks must be kept comfortable and their water and feed for the first few days must needs be given largely by hand. They are to be early led to drink from the regular water vessels and eat from the hoppers, but this takes time and patience.

The feeding of chicks I will discuss in the chapter on "Poultry on the General Farm," and as the same methods apply in both cases, I will refer the reader to that section.

After chicks get three or four weeks old their care is the simplest part of the poultry farm work and consists chiefly of filling feed hoppers and protecting them from vermin and thieves.

Board floor colony houses are used as a protection against rats and this danger necessitates the protection of the opening by netting and the closing of the doors at night.

c.o.c.kerels must be gotten out of the flocks and sold at an early age.

Those that are to be kept for sale or use as breeding birds should be early separated from the pullets. Coops for growing chickens, especially Leghorns, cannot be put among trees, as the birds will learn to roost in the trees, causing no end of trouble to get them broken of the habit.

All pullets save a few culls should be saved for laying. They are to be kept two years. They should lay sixty-five to seventy per cent as many eggs the second year as the first. They are sold the third summer to make room for the growing stock.

Twenty-five Acre Poultry Farms.

This section will be devoted to a general discussion of the type of poultry farms best suited to Section 4 and the southerly portions of Section 7 as discussed in the previous chapter.

We will discuss this type of farm with this a.s.sumption: That they are to be developed in large numbers by co-operative or corporate effort. This does not infer that they cannot be developed by individual effort, and nine-tenths of the operations will remain the same in the latter case.