The Library of Work and Play: Outdoor Work

Nelson S. Stone

RAISING PIGS

When I was nine years old I laid the foundation of my college fund. My grandmother had a flock of twenty or thirty geese which were kept for the pillows and feather beds they filled. Great was my delight when grandma told me that she would give me a pig if I would help her pick the geese. Helping her would have been reward enough, for I was a great grandma girl, but the ambition of my childhood was to own a pig. Did not my elder brother now own a beautiful mare and colt, and had he not started with a pig?

Wednesday was the day set for plucking the geese and all my leisure on Monday and Tuesday was spent in building a pen. Plenty of material from which to construct this edifice was found about the place. I wisely located it at the back of the henhouse which left me only three sides to build. One corner was roofed with the best boards I could find, for I didn't wish my precious pig to suffer from sunstroke or have his bed transformed into a mud-hole when it rained.

When the geese were picked to the last feather they could spare, I went with grandmother to select my pig from the litter of sucklings now ready to begin taking their food from the trough. She generously allowed me my choice, and if I did not get the pick of the bunch it was not her fault. I wonder how a girl of nine succeeded in transporting a lusty pig the three quarters of a mile between grandmother's house and ours. I should not like to undertake it now, but my confidence in my ability to do what I wanted done in those days was unlimited. A piece of rope, a stout cudgel, a pair of strong, young arms, and a high disregard of appearances sustained me. I got my treasure home and into his pen—no mean triumph even as viewed by my elder brother who had passed by the pig stage and even the calf stage and entered into the exalted realm of horse ownership.

My father was not the "your shoat, my hog" kind of a father. There came a time when he used to say that the girls owned all the cattle and the boys all the horses on the farm. When my pig grew up, I traded it to my father for a fine calf. This calf was the nucleus of my "herd," for I never owned a horse. All through my college course when I needed money, I used to write to father to sell "Rowena" or "Corinne" or "Natty Bumpo." (We named our calves after the people we read about.) There was always a buyer ready at hand and the price paid was strictly in accord with the market quotations. The cow which bought my graduation cap and gown was the last of her race, "Betsy Bobbett," one of the great-great-granddaughters of the calf for which I traded that original pig.

No one can deny or doubt that there is profit in pig raising. Pork "on the hoof" is ten cents a pound even as I write these words, with prospects good for going higher. A profit of one hundred per cent. is recorded by growers when the price is only six cents a pound.

With the one exception of poultry, hogs bring the quickest returns for investment of any live stock. It is poor economy to keep any animal which cannot pay its board, except for sentiment, and few people keep pigs on that account. If I were beginning again I should not trade my pig for a calf but should raise pigs.

In selecting a mother for my family of hogs I should care more about her individual character than about her breed. A good brood sow ought to have a good disposition, which means a good digestion, and respond quickly to kindness. Nervous, irritable sows often develop vicious habits. A short, broad face, a wide space between the eyes, a deep chest, broad back, and large hams with rather short legs are all considered good points. A good-natured, healthy pig has a bright, friendly manner when accosted and a look of shrewd though guileless interest in his master.

"Dirty as a pig" is a slander on the pig and a censure on its owner. Pigs and goats are more particular about their beds than either horses or cows. Success with porkers is spelt c-l-e-a-n-l-i-n-e-s-s. They like to wallow in the edge of a sluggish stream on a warm day. Well, so do you. Mud is not dirty unless mixed with foul manure and decaying vegetable matter.

All feeding troughs, floors, and beds should be thoroughly scraped, swept, and dried if the pigs are to be healthy, happy, and comfortable. Under no other conditions does keeping pigs pay.

You will be very fortunate if your young sow's first litter numbers ten or a dozen lively youngsters. Six or eight will not be bad if she raises them all, and with care she ought to. Improper care and feeding before the pigs come are usually responsible for any cannibalistic habits developed by the sow. Corn alone is not a good ration except for fattening. Used with wheat, middlings, bran, and ground oats, with plenty of clover or alfalfa hay, corn is all right. The sow should be put into a pen by herself before farrowing time. The best bedding is clean wheat or rye straw, which should not be left until it is wet and filthy. Sprinkle air-slaked lime in the sleeping pen under the fresh bedding. A sick pig means a neglectful owner.

Pigs ought to grow fast and without any check. At six months old they should weigh two hundred pounds, an average gain you see, of over a pound a day. With a good, healthy mother little pigs need no extra feeding the first month. The sow should be given nourishing food, bran and ground oats and rye, lots of skim-milk and an abundance of clean, fresh water.

If the pigs seem hungry when only a couple of weeks old a little, new trough should be made for them. A small quantity of boiled corn and skim-milk should be put into this trough where the little fellows can get to it but the sow cannot. They may not take much at first, but several hours later the trough should be rinsed and a fresh supply given. Sour, dirty milk may produce serious sickness in young pigs and check growth. The sow will wean them when she gets ready, and they will not know the difference if they get used to their trough early.

It is possible to raise and fatten pigs in pens, but it is not economical. Pasture is essential to their best growth. It gives them exercise, and the green food not only nourishes them, but aids in the digestion of the more concentrated foods. The expression, "Pigs in clover," is based on fact. A happy, healthy, money-maker is the pasture-fed pig. He will put on his ten cents' worth a day of bone, muscle and fat at less expense in a clover patch than elsewhere. Alfalfa or cow peas will serve him about as well. Fruit windfalls are good for him, too.

If you live on a place where grain or fruit are the main crops and a few cows are kept, you are losing a great opportunity if you are not raising a few pigs. They dispose of the surplus on such farms, as well as the unsalable garden crops and weeds, and pay their board day by day.

The owner should keep a close account with his pigs. If they eat what would otherwise be wasted you are so much to the good. What you sell them for, less what you have paid out for food, equals what you get for your time.

RAISING CHICKENS

Success with chickens does not depend upon the breed, nor upon any patent devices for hatching and brooding, nor on any special mixture of feed. You can find frenzied advertisers trying to disprove these statements, but do not your own observations bear me out? However, I venture to say that with common-sense and gumption, and a real liking for chickens, success in this line is nearly certain. There are dozens of good stories of boys who have begun chicken raising at twelve to fourteen years of age and have made money at it, beside training themselves at the same time in business methods and efficiency. There are no good reasons why girls also should not succeed.

There are certain principles of poultry culture upon which most people agree. These are based on a knowledge of hen nature and are the result of study and experience. We will discuss them under the following heads:

1, Housing and Care; 2, Food and Feeding; 3, Raising Young Stock; 4, Business Methods.

HOUSING

This first department properly includes not only the house proper with all its interior fixtures and its care, but the runs, the scratching shed, and all that has to do with the supply of air, warmth and sunshine and the protection of the flock from disease and vermin. No matter how plain and ordinary your chicken house is, the test of your fitness for the business comes with its care, not once a month, but day by day.

Many people have an idea that the only way to keep hens healthy and productive is to let them range. Of course it is true that chickens on the farm seem to pick up a free living, but it is equally true that, as a general thing, the farmer does not keep any account with his chickens, and if they get into the corn crib or granary he does not know how much grain they eat and how much they waste. If they hide their nests and the eggs spoil, or if they sit and the chicks do not live to get to the barnyard, the owner is unaware of his loss. If, having no house and nest boxes, the hens lay in the weeds, in the wood pile, in the straw stack, in the haymow, it's no loss, for the women and children hunt the eggs and their time isn't worth anything! But do you believe there are any farm hens whose portraits will appear in the big magazines? Did you see that one last year in Collier's Weekly? Do you suppose there are many 200-eggers on farms with all their supposed advantages? I don't. But we shall never know, because no accurate records can be kept of chickens that run at large.

I shall take it for granted that you expect to begin in a small way with very little to invest. Remember that a few hens pay better per hen than a large number, but on the other hand it takes about as much time to care for a dozen as it does for one hundred. You will therefore look forward with satisfaction to increasing your flock as your capital grows and your time becomes more valuable.

Have you a suitable place for chickens? It should be dry, sunny, though with some shade, protected from severe winds and storms. The sun is the greatest purifier and disinfector in the universe, and you must have your house face the south or east if possible. Whether your first house is made of store boxes or of expensive matched lumber the principles are the same. To make the house dry it should be built on well-drained soil and should sit up six inches from the surface of the ground so that air can circulate freely beneath.

The only heat in the hen house comes from the hens and the sunshine. Therefore, to make the house warm you should have it small enough so that your hens can generate heat enough to keep warm in winter. The exposure should be such that the sun can get into it. If possible it should be shaded by trees or other buildings against storms and summer sun. Every hen needs from four to five square feet of floor space and only eight to ten cubic feet of air space. Square houses are more economical to build. Figure out with diagrams and drawings to scale just how large a building is needed to house your flock when you get it. How low at the back can you make it without bumping your head when you go inside? How high in front must it be to provide space for your door and window? What shaped roof will be easiest to build, most economical of lumber, and most satisfactory as a rain shed?

Consider many things in the selection of material. Rough boards are a little cheaper, but how they do ruin good paint and whitewash brushes! Matched boards are cheaper and tighter than unmatched boards with strips nailed over the cracks. For the roof some kind of waterproof roofing material will keep the house warm and dry. If you have ever seen a chicken house with a cement floor you will be determined to have that kind. At first the expense may be greater than for boards, but if you live in your own home you can afford to put a cement floor in the chicken house sooner or later, especially if you do the work yourself. If you are a renter you will not feel like putting in expensive, permanent improvements. It will be warm and dry, saving many losses from wet feet and diseases brought on by dampness and cold. It is easy to clean. It will do away with the rat problem, and last forever. You can put it in after the house is built. Figure out the cost of a layer of cement one and one half inches thick laid on a bed of gravel and small stones. The cement is mixed as follows: one part Portland cement, three parts clean sand, five parts gravel. Mix the cement pretty thick, tamp it down conscientiously until perfectly level, then with a trowel smooth it and smooth it, over and over, until the surface is free from anything like a stone or large pebble.

The door to the chicken house should be well hung, easy to open, shut, and lock. The window is to admit light and sunshine, especially the latter. Very small panes may be cheap but they shut out the sun; twelve eight by ten panes in a single sash make a window of convenient size. The window should be placed so that the sun can get way back to the very farthest corner of the house. A high window is better for this than a low one. The diagram shows why.

Sunshine and exercise are necessary for healthy fowls. They can stand cold weather well, if they are kept dry and active. Scratching sheds or open-front pens provide sunshine and exercise.

Scratching for food in the litter keeps hens moving and they get to be very athletic, jumping up to cabbages and fresh meat or grain self-feeders hung just out of reach. Scratching sheds in the North need adjustable curtains of coarse muslin to keep out driving rain, snow, and sleet. The State Agricultural Experiment Station at Orono, Maine, has made valuable studies of curtained sheds, and the use of this form of poultry house has found favour all over the country.

The furniture of the hen house consists of roosts, dropping board, nests, dust box, and utensils to hold ground feed, grit, shell, and water. In making and erecting each piece ask yourself, "Will this be easy to clean?" The roosts should be in the corner farthest from door and window, out of all draughts. There should be enough of them to provide each fowl with six to eight inches of room and they should be set at least a foot apart. Do not have the roosts at different levels. It is hen nature to want the highest place, and they will fight and crowd and worry each other if there is a higher roost. Pieces of two by two, with the upper edge rounded, make good perches.

As the floor of the chicken house is also the dining table for the occupants it is extremely important that there should be a well-built platform under the roosts for droppings, in order to keep the floor clean. There should be space enough between this board and the perches to allow you to clean it frequently without difficulty.

If you ever tried to clean a range of wall nests you know why the up-to-date poultry men are discarding them as unsanitary. Many are now placing their nests under the dropping board. They are out of the way here, not too high for the hens, nor too low for you. Square nests, fourteen inches each way and at least a foot from the droppings platform, are satisfactory. A long door hinged at the top and hooked at the bottom should form the back of a row of nests. You open this to gather eggs and to clean the nests. The front, where the hens enter, should be in behind under the platform. As it is rather dark in there, the hens are pleased, because they like to preserve the old-time fiction that they are hiding their nests away. The nest should be five or six inches deep. Straw is the best nesting material. Short hay is next best. A hen cannot be happy with excelsior twisted round her toes and an unhappy hen is an unproductive hen.

The dust bath must be provided. Most baths are wet but hens are dry cleaners. The dust bath must be dry to be of any use; the lighter, finer, and dryer the better. A sunny corner of the house or shed is the best place. Sifted coal ashes and street dust is a good mixture.

Allow just as much space for the runs as you can afford to fence. If possible divide the enclosure in two and keep one part seeded to clover while the chickens are in the other. The heavier fowls usually make very little trouble flying over a fence of five foot wire netting even though it have no top strip. Clipping one wing may be necessary to restrain some individuals. Small trees in the runs are most desirable. Plant there such small fruit trees as plum or cherry and the hens will help to keep insects in check.

One of the biggest items of work in the chicken business is keeping the house clean. The health, comfort, happiness, and the very life of the hens, as well as the business, depend on this. Many a boy with a sort of natural knack at carpentry can build a chicken house out of second-hand lumber or out of a couple of piano boxes. But it takes a long distance form of gumption to keep any chicken house sanitary. The droppings should be cleaned up often and right here a word to the wise. Hen manure is a valuable garden fertilizer if it is sprinkled with land plaster while fresh. Otherwise it may become very nearly worthless. So if you have a garden or can dispose of your fertilizer every day or two you can make something extra on this by-product by a semi-weekly cleaning of roosts and droppings board. Litter is not dirt in the chicken house but it ought to be dry, fresh litter.

It is not enough that the house should look clean. The obvious dirt, bad as it is, does less harm than the almost invisible vermin that lurk in the crevices of roosts, nests, and walls. Whitewash is a very wholesome finish for the interior and should be put on at least twice a year. This is not enough however. Every square inch of surface should be wet thoroughly with some liquid which is sure death to vermin. Spray or brush may be used. I wonder if this could be done too often in hot weather. Once a month is probably often enough if good insect powder is used on the hens and in the nests. In winter the vermin are less active, but it is not safe to neglect them even then.

FOOD AND FEEDING

Hens are known to be omnivorous. They must have animal and mineral as well as vegetable food. They need these things in variable quantities depending on their occupation. The hen's main duties are growing, laying, brooding, moulting, fattening. She needs a great variety of these three classes of foods throughout her life. Study your flock, read of the experiences of others in magazines, bulletins, and books, follow their advice, and work out mixtures and methods to suit your conditions after you gain experience. The hens will give you many a hint. Let them out of the pen now and then just before feeding time and see how they make for the grass. In the evening the earthworms are near the surface. The hens devour them greedily. You can get the flock back easily if you have a call, whistle, or other signal which they associate with grain-scattering, but they will go in at twilight anyhow.

Sitting hens need less food because of their sedentary occupation. The main thing is to keep food and fresh water where they can get it when they want it, or see that they go to it regularly.

Broody hens are a trial. The common practices of starving them, ducking them, and otherwise subjecting them to indignities, are little short of cruel and often fail to cure their natural desire to sit. Stop and reason not with, but about, the hen. Having laid all the eggs nature has provided during the spring, the hen's instinct is to brood and rear a nestful. She has worked hard and maybe is run down physically. Feel her bones. What you want from her is more eggs. Instead of wasting time "getting even" with her for being a nuisance, try some rational way of breaking up her desire to sit. Remove her immediately from the nest to a coop. Instead of starving her give her a plentiful supply of the diet you have found best for layers. She will probably soon begin to lay again if treated sensibly.

Moulting is a perfectly natural process but it occurs at the end of the season and the chickens are often in a low state of vitality. For this reason it is a critical time. Study the hens. Find out what their physical condition is at moulting season. The best condition is half-way between fat and thin. If they are thin, provide a wholesome diet rich in fatty foods, as corn, oats, sunflower, and some flaxseed, with bran, meat scraps, and clover. If heavy with fat from too rich a diet in the summer, less of the fat-producing foods makes a better moulting diet.

The quality and flavour of the eggs and meat depend pretty much on the kind of food given. If filth is taken into the hen's system it affects her general health and efficiency. There is an opinion that hens and pigs are by nature dirty. We will not stop to argue that, but your hens will eat nothing but clean food if nothing else is provided. That's certain! Look to your feeding racks and watering pans. Use water freely and a stiff brush or cloth. Clean water is positively necessary. All sorts of diseases lurk in dirty houses, filthy runs, and stale, unclean feeding and drinking pans.

Regularity in feeding is important. Do not go into this business if you expect frequently to be otherwise employed at feeding time. The main feedings are two, morning and late afternoon, for whole or cracked grain scattered in the litter. Ground grain should be there, in a hopper, at all hours in summer and all the afternoon the rest of the year. The exercise they must take to get the grain keeps the hens from getting fat and lazy.

A busy hen is a happy hen and a productive hen. Hang a half cabbage up just out of reach in the house on a stormy day and see them train for the standing broad jump! If you can get what is known as "the haslet," really the lungs, heart, and liver of a porker or lamb, you can suspend this in the same way and they will work all the better for it.

RAISING YOUNG CHICKENS

It is poor practice to set your hens in the chicken house. Prepare as many fresh nests as you expect to need. Put them in the cellar, unused shed, under the porch, or any convenient and protected place. Doors of wire netting or slats are a great convenience. When a hen is broody, take her off the nest the first night and put her into the new place with an artificial egg or two. Ten to one she will stay all right. If not, do not waste time with her. When assured that her mind is unalterably made up, give her thirteen eggs and close the door on her again. Set two or three the same day and later combine the flocks under one hen. Select the eggs with reference to their shape, size, and quality of shell. Misshapen, very large, or very small eggs or those with thin shells are worthless for setting. Set the eggs of the best layers. Every morning take sitters off nests, leave food and water for them, and return in half an hour. Usually they are all back in their places in less time than that. If not, you can replace and shut them in again. In eighteen to twenty-one days the eggs will hatch.

Probably more little chicks die from lice than from any other cause. Preventive measures must begin early. Get fresh, dry insect powder and treat the nest and hen about the third, the ninth, and the fifteenth day of incubation. Rub the powder all through the feathers. Fine dust obstructs the breathing pores of the lice and kills them. When you take the chicks from the nest examine the head, neck, and vent regions of every one. If lice are present a drop of melted lard will put an end to them. Constant vigilance and nothing short of it, will prevent death from lice.

A good home-made lice powder, costing only about four cents a pound, may be made as follows: Mix together one quarter pint crude carbolic acid (90 per cent. pure), and three quarters of a pint of gasolene. Stir into this enough plaster of Paris to take up the liquid, (about two and one half pounds). Mix thoroughly and rub through a wire mosquito screen to break the lumps. This can be used to dust through the feathers, the day after it is made. Keep in a tight jar or box. This powder is the invention of an expert in poultry husbandry.

The coops for hen and chicks need not be ponderous, but they should be rain proof. A coop two and one half feet square with removable roof and floor is not too heavy to handle and answers every purpose. A wire netting run three or four feet long attached to each coop is necessary and this combination will house a hen and from fifteen to twenty chickens.

All the food a young chick needs the first twenty-four hours is provided by nature. After that it is "up to you." Their first meal may be hard-boiled eggs minced finely, shells and all, and mixed with oatmeal or custard made of milk and eggs baked hard, or it may be baked and crumbled corn bread. By the third day they will be ready for raw broken grain. There are many good commercial kinds: less trouble than making your own mixtures. The chicks will learn to scratch for this in a week or two. The hen is their teacher. Fine grit, charcoal, and clean water must be kept where they can get what they want. Soft food should not be fed in unlimited quantities; give what they will eat in five or ten minutes, then take it away. They are likely to over-eat of wet mashes, but what they have to work for is not likely to give them indigestion.

When chickens are two months old they no longer need wet mash. They should now have access to food whenever they want it. A mixture of cracked corn, wheat, beef scrap, bone, grit, shell, and other grains, with dry middlings and bran, may be put into a slatted self-feeder, like the illustration, easily constructed by yourself. It is not much trouble to see that this is never empty. If fed only at intervals they rush at you, bolt the biggest grains, stuff their crops, crowd away weak or modest ones; result, some are under-fed, others are over-fed. If food is kept where they can get it whenever they happen to think of it they take a reasonable amount, then visit the growing clover or grass, pick up a casual pebble, take a drink of water, scratch out a worm, and return to the feed tray, all in natural course of the day's work.

You will want to get rid of most of your young cockerels as soon as they are marketable. Broilers bring highest prices. To put them in tip-top condition they should be fattened for about two to three weeks when they are four months old. There is nothing better for fattening than a mash made of equal parts finely ground corn meal and wheat middlings with one fourth the quantity of meat meal. This should be wet with sour skim-milk or buttermilk and fed in a semi-liquid condition, about the consistency of pancake batter. Ground oats may be added. The product is known in the highest priced city hotels as "milk fed" or even "cream fed" chicken. If you can get skim-milk cheap why not buy a bunch of young cockerels and stuff them for market? They have been known to put on a pound for every five pounds of this mixture eaten.

BUSINESS METHODS

The day you drive your first nail into what is to be your chicken house you should start an account. Every item should go down, cost of materials, cost of stock, cost of feed. Economize where you can by utilizing vacant space for growing clover for summer feed and some root crop like mangolds for winter supply. Apples are fine in winter for hens. You can often get bushels of windfalls for the picking. Sunflowers are easy to grow and their heads hold a tremendous lot of chicken feed. Table scraps ground with a hand mill vary the hen's diet, but do avoid sloppy messes.

There are two sides to every account. If you charge the chickens with what they cost you, it is only fair to yourself and to them to credit them with the eggs and meat they furnish, as well as with increase of stock, etc.

In every flock there are some idlers. They lay only a hundred or so eggs, they leave their eggs too long when sitting, or they never put on any weight. You want to be rid of all such. You can mark the bad sitters, and send them to the pot, as well as those whose habits are such as to make them a nuisance. But you need to know which fowls lay the biggest and best eggs and which lay the largest number. For market in our country where eggs are sold by the dozen it is numbers that count, but for breeding you want eggs of good size and shape. You also want to set the eggs of the good layers. These eggs taste no better in cake or omelet, but by careful selection you can breed a strain of extra good layers, right in your hen house. The device known as a trap-nest is the thing you will need if you go at it scientifically. You want it in winter, too, to prevent killing your best hens for potpie, while the idlers cheerfully eat your grain without recompense. The simpler the mechanism of the trap-nest the better. It must stand open until the hen enters, then close without frightening her. Most of them keep the hen a prisoner until you go and examine the nest, credit the hen by her leg-band number, and release her. By following the drawings in the bulletins of the New York and Maine Experiment Stations referred to in the list of bulletins on chickens you can construct your own trap-nests.

There are people who claim that "common chickens" or mixed breeds are hardier than pure bred fowls and better all around producers. How many can show records to make good that claim? American boys and girls who go into chicken raising will want to breed from good pure stock. Nothing is too good for them. Did you ever hear any one show any enthusiasm when passing a flock of mongrels? Contrast this with the delight you and all your friends take in the sight of a hundred fowls all white, all red, all spangled, all black, all piebald, all blue, or all speckled, as alike as peas in a pod! I vote for the pure stock every time. You can keep it pure and strong by exchanging cockerels with other breeders of the same variety and with similar ideals and practices.

Keeping chickens isn't mere child's play. There's lots to be done. You must be carpenter, gardener, breeder, merchant, and even doctor, all rolled into one. But there is fun in it and profit in it. Better than all, there is a satisfaction in doing a good job and doing it well, and it keeps a boy out of doors where he belongs if he's a healthy boy.

As with many other products of home industry the first and best market is the home market. Credit the hens with every pound of meat you furnish for the table and every egg consumed by the family. But you will soon need to extend your market. Across the street, up and down on both sides, you can find people who like "personally conducted" eggs and prefer that the fowls served on their tables should be acquaintances rather than the embalmed kind. You must be business man enough to work up a trade for fresh, clean eggs in attractive packages, and for wholesome meat. It would be a good stroke of business to date your eggs if you know what demand you can depend on. That would help impress the idea of real freshness on the consumer's mind.

If you pluck fowls for market it will interest you to know that feathers have a market value. They should be plucked dry and the wing and tail feathers kept separate. Any large city dealer in chickens will probably take your feathers. By-products often make the difference between plus and minus in a year's business.

The winner of the first prize of one hundred dollars in the Junior Poultry Contest of the Oregon Agricultural College tells this story:

RAISING CHICKENS

Boys and girls should raise chickens in the city as well as on the farm because it pays and is a fine occupation. It is a work that never grows tiresome and new experiences are always awaiting you. Various theories are advocated as to the proper manner of feeding and housing to get the best results but simple rules are the best to begin with. Plenty of clean water, clean houses and yards and good feed are needed to get the best results. Spade up a little in the chicken yard every day that is pleasant, but if it is cold and in wet weather provide a scratching shed. Keep the hens busy. Read the bulletins furnished free by the government and the various experiment stations. Also subscribe to a good poultry paper. The ideas you will get from these together with your own experience will make you a successful poultry raiser. By doing all that was stated above I was able to win first prize in the poultry contest just closed.

Clarence A. Hogan

SUCCESS WITH CHICKENS

The contest of the Portland Junior Poultry Association has closed. It lasted a whole year, and it seemed as if it would never come to an end. But if it had not been for the contest I would never have known many of the interesting things I now know about chickens.

I had twelve white Leghorn hens and a cock entered. They were all little beauties and I enjoyed working with them very much.

They laid one thousand six hundred twenty-two eggs during the year. The eggs were worth from twenty-five to sixty cents a dozen. We fed them wheat, corn, barley, oats, and bran in which table scraps were mixed, oyster shells, grit, prepared beef scraps, charcoal, and green foods such as grass from the lawn, cabbage, kale, and lettuce and other green things from the garden. Each hen made us a profit of two dollars and seventy-two cents for the year.

Chickens need lots of care. Their house must be cleaned out, there should be some fresh ground dug up in the yard, and they need some green food every day. Papa took care of the house, and I mowed the lawn and gave them the clippings and gathered cabbage leaves, kale leaves, and lettuce leaves out of the garden and gave them each day.

In the spring time we let them out a few minutes every morning to get bugs and worms. They soon had all the bugs and worms scratched out of the garden and then they ran out in the yard and scratched up the flower beds, which did not please mamma very well. After that they wanted to go to the neighbour's yard but we had to keep them up. This was before we made the garden.

Chickens make nice pets. They are much nicer than dogs or cats, and if you take good care of them they will pay well beside. I had a nice little white Leghorn hen I called "Petty." When she was a little chicken I would catch her every day and play with her. She would go in the nest and wait for some one to take her out and pet her. She got so tame that I could catch her any place in the yard. I would go in the yard and get her and take her out in the garden and dig for her and let her find the bugs and worms.

I had another little chicken that I called "Jim." He was a cute little rooster. When he was just a little chicken I would put him to bed every night and when he grew a little older he would not go to bed alone. One night we weren't at home at his bedtime and when we came home that night we heard a funny little noise in the back yard. It was raining and Jim had gone under the sweet pea vines to sleep instead of going into his box.

The first little chicks we hatched we took away from the hen and raised them by hand. For about a week after they were hatched we put them in a basket and covered them over with warm, woollen cloths and set them by the stove to keep warm over night. I had a peach box with a wire covering to keep them in, in the daytime. On sunshiny days we set them out in the sunshine but after about a week they were not satisfied with that. I decided that what they wanted was to get out and run for bugs. So one afternoon when I came home from school it was nice and sunshiny and I let them out of their box. When they first stepped into the grass they were surprised. That was the first time they had ever stepped on the lawn. They ran right to a rose bush and stayed right there all the time picking off bugs. Each evening I let them out they would go a little farther away from home. At last they had caught all the bugs around the place and if we did not watch, they would run over to the neighbour's yard. I am anxious for the time to come when we will have more little chicks.

Ruth Hayes

The girl who tells this story is thirteen years old. She won second prize, fifty dollars.

ANOTHER PRIZE WINNER'S STORY

During the time that I have been taking care of poultry I have been successful. I only had six chickens in the Oregon Junior Poultry Contest, five hens and a rooster, but I have about fifty other chickens to take care of. The chickens that I had in the contest were Black Minorcas, but I also raise White Wyandottes. I seem to have better success with my White Wyandottes than with my Black Minorcas. The house I have for the contest chickens is twelve feet wide and six feet long. The place they roost in is four feet by six and the rest is a scratching shed, which is eight feet by six. The house is open front and has a ground floor, which is dry and the chickens can dust in it.

I feed them three times a day, grain morning and noon, which I feed in litter, and a warm mash at night so they can go to roost warm. I also keep bran, charcoal, and grit before them all the time. I have a bone cutter, and feed cut bone to my chickens once a week. I clean off the drop board every morning, and once a week I coal-oil the roost and where the roost rests. During this cold weather I do not let the chickens out very early and when it is raining I do not let them out at all. Every night after the chickens have gone to roost I go out and throw a little grain in their litter and that gives them something to do the first thing in the morning.

I am sorry that I did not have a photograph of myself to send you.

Frank Mitchell

A BOY FEEDS SIX THOUSAND HENS IN HALF AN HOUR

What do you know about that? I saw this feat done last winter by a fourteen-year old California boy, and I took his photograph as he was doing it. What can a boy not do if he has the opportunity? There are other boys who find it a harder task and a more disagreeable one to feed half a dozen hens. A boy can feed six thousand hens and gather two or three thousand eggs a day and go to school.

This California boy had a gray pony to help him, but what enabled him to perform this feat day after day was system. His uncle, the owner of the farm, had planned the work to make it easy. The farm contains one hundred and twenty acres, and the six thousand hens are scattered over the whole farm in colony houses. The system of feeding was a liberal feed of soft mash in the morning. Three colony houses were placed together. The middle one was a laying house; the other two, roosting houses. In one end of the laying house there was a wheat bin holding several sacks of wheat. The bin was a self-feeding hopper. After dinner the fourteen-year old boy jumped on his gray horse and made the rounds of the houses, opening a door to the hopper of wheat, so that the hens could eat at will during the afternoon. It took just a moment to jump off of his horse, open the door, and jump on again, the horse going on the lope between the houses. He made the rounds in less than half an hour. About three or four o'clock he hitched his pony to a low wagon and visited all the houses, gathering the eggs. This was a bigger job than feeding the hens; he could not go as fast with the eggs. In the morning, about seven o'clock, he makes the rounds of the houses, and without getting off his horse opens the doors to the laying houses, and does it all in fifteen minutes. What do you know about that?

James Dryden

AN AMATEUR'S EXPERIENCE

In April, nineteen hundred and one, I purchased four broody hens, two settings of White Wyandotte eggs, and two of Plymouth Rock. I live in a suburban district where dogs and cats abound and poultry cannot have free range. I therefore made two wire-covered board runs, six feet by eight, eighteen inches high, and against a six-inch hole sawed in one end of each I placed a box turned on its side for a coop. Of twenty-eight Wyandotte eggs, twenty-six hatched, and three chicks died. Of twenty-six Plymouth Rocks only three hatched, and these I put with the Wyandottes in care of the two most motherly hens.

Every morning I fed a mash of meal, shorts, and beef scraps, in equal parts, mixed dry with boiling water; at noon and night oatmeal, cracked wheat, or occasionally cracked corn, and clean table scraps at any time. Oyster shells and fresh water were always before them. Mothers and children ate together, each taking what she liked best. As often as they soiled the grass I shifted the runs, and on fine days I let the families out for an hour before dark into an adjoining field, keeping an eye on their wanderings.

October first I sold the four hens, which had laid meanwhile fifteen and a half dozen eggs. Twelve chicks were cockerels, which were killed as needed.

November first I reduced the daily feed to two meals—a warm mash at half past eight A.M. so that they would scratch awhile before being fed, and for supper grain, generally oats, scattered about the yard, with a few handfuls inside the house to induce more scratching. They had all they would eat, but if they left any food I skipped the next meal and let them get hungry. The water was renewed often, dishes kept clean, and field excursions continued occasionally.

November sixth I sold the first dozen eggs, and for eleven months the supply never failed. The eggs were large, and the hens were active, healthy, and happy. Any success I attribute to moderate feeding, exercise, and cleanliness.