Nashville union and American. [volume] (Nashville, Tenn.) 1868-1875, 1870-08-05
FARM AND GARDEN.
MANAGEMENT OF POULTRY.

4 MANIAC EmENT OF POGL TRY.
Warren Leland, proprietor of the Me-
tropolitan Hotel, who keeps large mum.
bers of poultry on his farm at Rye, N.
| Y, gives the following method of mauag-
ing his poultry 1t will interest all who
think poultry can be made profitable
when kept in large numbers:
| have found that for every hundred
fowls you must give up at least an acre.
But rough land is as good as any. Hens
naturally love the bush, and | lOp young
trees, but leave a shred hv which they
live year or more. These form hiding
| places and retreats rOr them Ia such
places they prefer to lay. l have great
/ success, and it depends on three or four
rules, by observing which | believe a
good living can be made by hens and
turkeys. l. l give my fowls great range.
Eighteen acres belong to them exclusive
| ly. Then the broods have the range of
another big lot, and the turkeys go
half mile or more from the
house. The eighteen acres of poultry
yard is rough land, of little use for
tillage. 1t has a pond in it, and
many rocks, and bushes, and weeds, and
sandy places, and ash heaps, and lime
and bones, and grass, and place which
plough up to give Them worms. 2.
| When a hen has set, | take her box,
| throw out the straw and earth, let it be
out in the sun and rain few days, and
| give it good coat of whitewash on both
sides. In winter, when it is very cold, l
have an old stove in their house, and keep
| the warmth above freezing. There is also
an open fireplace where l build fire in
| cool, wet days. They dry themselves,
| and when the fire goes out there is a bed
of ashes for them to wallow in. Summer
or winter my hens have all the lime, ashes
and sand they want. 3. Another reason
why | have such luck is because my poul-
tTy-yards receive all the scraps from the
Metropolitan Hotel. Egg making is no
easy work, and hens will not do much of
it without high feed. They need Just
what man who works reQuires-Wheat
bread and meat. Even when wheat costs
two dollars believe in feeding 1t to hens
AS to breeds, l prefer the Brahmas, light
and dark. l change ROSTERS every spring,
and man on the farm has no other duty
than to take care of my poultry. l fire.
quently turn off 5000 spring chickens in
single season.
CONVERTING STRAW INTO MA
NURE
The editor of the Ohio Fdrnaer, in re-
ply to correspondent who asks chow he
may convert large stack of straw into
manure, SO that it may be used the COM
ing fall as a manure of wheat" replies as
follows:
This is an important question, and one
that thousands of farmers throughout the
country should ask of themselves, and at
the same time adopt some means of doing
the work. 1t takes a straw stack very
many years to rot down into manure, and
no wise farmer will wait for this. There
are several methods adopted for decOm-
posing straw; one, and in our opinion the
most profitable, is to use it as stable feed
and litter in the winter time; another is by
scattering it in the furrOW behind the
pillow, and covering it up; q third by
spreading it over the surface of a field in |
the spring and burning it. By this means
the heat destroys the upstarting weeds,
and the ashes makes valuable fertilizer
1t is, of course, too late april g. for |
the adoption of the first method by our
correspondent and receive any benefit |
this season, and as to the second, a great |
deal of labor is required to accomplish |
the desired end, and sufficient decomposi-
ton would not take place to render any |
material aid to the first crop. We do not |
believe the full value of the material can
be obtained by burning, as most of the |
worn lands needs loOsening up as well as |
Strengthening, and straw is one of the |
very best materials for this purpose.
Our advice would be to let the stack |
stand until fall. Go on and put in the |
wheat as well as it can be done, and then |
draw out the straw and sprinkle it over
the entire surface of the field, if you have |
enough. In this way you secure a double |
value; the mulch protects the wheat |
plants in winter; preventing the upheav-
ing of the roots by the action of the frost |
1t will be noticed that whenever a coating |
of snow remains upon a wheat field dur |
ing winter, there is vigorous growth in |
the spring, and here is the philosophy of |
using straw as mulching; more frequent
ly the snow is blown than melted away
the straw retains it.
The dressing may be put upon the field |
as soon as the grain Is narrowed in, or
after the fall growth is completed, but |
not proftably any time between these two
periods. The coating, if put on at seed
ing time, should not be so heavy as to |
prevent the free growth of the grain.
After the crop has been removed, the
straw, which will be then considerably
rotted, may be plowed under with the |
stubble, when a second benefit will be de-
rived.