The Sunday herald and weekly national intelligencer., 1890-07-20
RUNNING A SUBURBAN HENNERY
There is Great Deal More Prose Than
Poetry About 1t. ssssss ----..

Poetry About 1t. aa.Ms szss.s. za-l-ss
setting hen is the contrariest thing in the
world except-a woman! Did you ever try to
"break up" setting hen? You could break
your heart easier. Pull her Off the nest and she
will meekly squat down and hug the earth until
you are out OF sight, when she will get back into
the nest, unless you are cute enough to head her
off by shutting it up. Is that discouraging to
her henship? Not bit Of it, She will make an
other nest in an empty barrel, or find hole to
crawl under the barn, and she aUiU set there,
out of sight and reach of the longest pole, until
she is dead, dead, before she will give in to you.
There is a great deal more prose than poetry
about the delights of "hennery" in suburban
place. AT first keeping poultry is one of the
leading motives for selecting a semi-rural home.
Visions of fresh boiled eggs-they do not taste
like store eggs to the connoisseur-and omelets
beguile you. Another vision is of pretty chicks
Just out of the shell, dotting the spring green
grass with little puffs of yellow down that rival
the golden dandelions in beauty. Still another
idyllic dream you have Of early "broilers'' that
don't cost seyenty-ve cents apiece. But delu-
sion delusive than either of these is of eggs
to dispose of at the highest rates, and ''broilers'
worth their weight in silver to the market man,
who will come to your door and get them, gladly
deposting his silver, thus saving you all trouble.
Delusions, delusions all.
In the first place, you buy twelve Leghorn
hens, because they are such good layers. You
extra for pure -blooded cock to take care of this
harem. Then you find out that Leghorn is all
legs and no body, and never would do for
"broiler," much less a baked hen; so you pen
this flock in by themselves, with good nursery,
and invest in twelve Dominicks or Brahmins for
flesh and body. These cost but little less than
the first batch, and they must have separate
house, with all the modern convenences at
tached. The Leghorns do lay nice large eggs,
but you have no desire to eat up you stock (capi-
itaD the first year, therefore you buy all your
fowls for the table the first six months, and you
feed your hens. My hens never stop as long as
there is ything to eat. They are always hungry,
and pick away at something from dawn to dark.
They actually consume buShel of hard food
and bushe of soft food week, beside all the
bugs and worms. If so much as appear in the
doorway they gather about me in the most affec-
tionate manner-for something more to eat. 1t
is awful discouraging to a kind-hearted person
never to be able to appease the unsatisiied appe-
tite of even hen. When one hen makes up her
mind to set all the hens in that flock wants to
do the same thing. They don't consider the in
terests of their employers for minute, or that
eggs are up in the market and that now is the
time for madam to make money. Not much
Every hen 'strkes''-wili not lay an egg for love
or money, while those aristocratie Leghorns, who
despise housekeeping, and will not attend to
brood of chicks, even they stop laying, and will
"cluck" and pretend to set for days at a time,
resisting all Woman's art until they get salts
fed. Then they stop OF their own accord, having
made respectable feint of obeying Natures
great law of life after elf-preserYation-repro
duction.
1t must have been Methuselah who said,
Don't count your chickens until they are
hatched," or was it Noah, who penned off little
corner of the ark for a hennery, who first found
out that eggs would break, spoil for want of
fertilization, get eaten up by rats or weazels,
and in hundred other ways get off the track of
incubation before nature had performed her