Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1889-12-02
agricultural department.
What to Expect from Hens.

Inc mems are not very uuSN Juot
now-in fact | should say they were
on strike, for hardly an egg is forth
coming so it may not be uninterest-
ing at this time to remark few
words relative to this important mat
ter. Eggs are high now, that is SEN
sible to every one who buys them,
and fortunate indeed is the breeder
who has lot of pnllets that were
Matched in early March and April.
They are laying now, or, at least
ought to be. If they are not some
thing is wrong somewhere. Well
then, if the hens are not laying now,
have you ever calculated what is
good years expectation from hen IN
the way of Smelling out. There are
365A days in year, now would you
call hen that would lay 1904 eggs
in a year one with a good record?
she would be prize winner sure !;
but, all the same there never was
such hen except Josh Billings blue
hen that laid two eggs on Sunday
and one each week day. Josh Bill
ings, however, ! believe is dead, and
80 is his blue hen.
Let us begin on September 1st,
with the hen just ready to moult.
Here she begins to take off her dress
one feather at time until she looks
ready to scare blind mule, and this
| lasts just about five or six weeks.
Then slowly begin to come new feath
ers also one at a time, which con-
sumes again about five or six weeks.
All during this time the system, if
not specially maintained by nutritious
food, will shrivel away into almost
nothing but skin and bones, and now
that the winter dress is nicely fitted
it takes just about three or four weeks
to put on a new supply of hen flesh
and organize new brood of eggs
that had completely dried up into the
backbone: So this whole business
of moulting just spliced off about 80
or 100 days from the beginning, and
here we are in the middle of Deem
Der and not an egg from the old hen.
But this is hen nature, and the best
thing to be done is to hurry this
changing dress business with good,
nutritious food, and keep up Mrs.
Hens constitution.
Now we want her to lay, and she
does too-starts with a brood of about
from 80 to 40 eggs according to breed.
This consumes from 40 to 80 days
time to deposit, and lands us in the
last of January OF beginning of Feb
ruary. If a sitter she will want to
set, but this ace don't want, so we
pen her up to hurry up another brood
of eggs. Sitters or no sitters, the
time for the formation of new broods
is about 10 or II days, if a pullet or
yearling hen-older hens longer. OFF
she starts again and gives us from 20
to 80 eggs more, and another hatch
or rest comes. Now we are over in
March or beginning of April with
from 80 to 20 eggs in 200 days, The
sitter we now set, and the non-sittef
takes rest, generally, though earlier
when the weather is cold. But we
want 10 from the hatcher and 16C
from the non-hatcher up to Septem-
Der LIST. The sitter. therefore, has
about 80 or 40 to make up yet, and
the non-sitter about 40. Each can
readily do it also, if they are made to
mind their business as diligent hen
ought to.
Well, the hatcher wants to hatch
and she just takes about 81 days tC
do good mothers work. That puts
us over to June, during which inter
val the non-sitter was busy making
up her record, and she will now not
likely stop much more than about two
weeks and she lands on time with 6
good record. The sitter had three
months to lay 80 or 40 eggs. This
we made her do by couple sentences
of solitary confinement on hard tack
when she got notion to stop laying
and again become mother. She
made her record, however, and here
we are again at September to begin
another round. Quite interesting
this here laying business if you just
know how to manage it, Exchange
The American CutiUdtor expresses
the belief that the gradual lesseuine