Rock Island daily Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1886-1893, 1892-09-06
AN EXPERIENCE WITH CHICKENS.

Tho Creatures Were Plucked and Ready
to BE Sent Away. but They Staid.
"The incident of my life which inn
pressed my mind most deeply was a calam-
ity that befell my immediate family dur
ing my early boyhood," said a govern
ment official to reporter. my father
was farmer. We kept chickens-about
200 in number-the eggs and tender prog
eny of which were sent to market and
formed not inconsiderable fraction of the
family income.
sit is said that well managed hen will
produce a clear profit of two dollars yearly.
Such an estimate is a trifie exaggerated,
for no fowls were ever more carefully and
economically bred, fed and cared for than
ours, and we thought that they did excel
lently when they earned about 1925 year.
How far that sum went to supply neces-
saries any one can imagine who has been
brought up to agricultural pursuits.
ION farm the hen money'-that is, the
cash obtained by the sale of eggs and
birds-is customarily regarded as belong
ing to the women folks Nm our case it
bought clothes for my mother and my lit
tie sisters, providing many small luxuries
also, and leaving each year a goodly sum
TO be put away in a long and mysterious
stocking, where the family savings were
kept. Our flock of chickens was, in short,
equivalent to a safe investment in bonds,
from which a regular income could with
certainty be drawn. My earliest occupa-
tion was to insist in taking care of them
1t was my task to search for hidden and
surreptitious nests in the barn and else
where, and as soon as was big enough
made traps to capture the rats and other
vermin which preyed upon the young ones
when they could.
without further preface let me say
that one summer, at the season when the
fruit was ripe, my mother made a great
quantity of cherry bounce for the brew
ing of which she was famous. After COM
plotting the process she directed me to
throw the refuse of fermented cherries
away and did SO. L threw the stuff near
the chicken houses, thinking that the
fowls might relish it. Later on we heard
a good deal of excited quawking from
that direction, but paid no particular at
tention to it. After supper l went out, as
was my usual duty, to see that the poultry
had gone to roost all right for the night.
You can imagine my establishment and
dismay when found all of the chickens
hens, roosters, pullets and cockerels-
scattered in and around the chicken houses,
every one of them dead.
II need not dwell upon the CONSERVATION
occasioned in the family by this appalling
misfortune. Two hundred fowls, which a
short time before had been apparently as
healthy as any poultry that ever scratched
for worms in a barnyard, were stiffening in
death. 1t was no time to indulge in I'M
profitable grief, however. As my mother
suggested, while drying her eyes with her
apron, the only thing to do was to pluck
them Immediately and send them to mar
ket in the morning.
with all hands busily engaged we fin
ished the job by a. M, stacking up the
plucked chickens on tables and in corners
t.llx- l.
console ourselves with the reflection I'll at
the money they brought for flesh and
feathers would purchase a fair nucleus for
a new flock. So tired were we that none
of us woke up until after6 d, which is pretty
late for farmers. / was the first to 90 down
stairs. To my amaZement and horror the
results of our labors of the previous even
ing had vanished. OF the 200 neatly picked
fowls which we had made ready for mar
ket not one remained. The kitchen door.
left accidently unfastened the night be-
fore, now swung wide, opening through
the woodshed to the garden, and showed
how the robbers had entered.
Just as l was on the point of giving the
alarm l heard a faI1iliar 'cock-a-doodle-
door and a most remarkable looking crea
ture, which l hesitated mOmentarily to
identify bird, hoped upon the
threshold and crowed thrice. 1 ran to the
door of the woodshed and there, in the
garden, were all of our chickens-200 of
them, plucked, but none the less alive
busily scratching up the vegetable. A
family council, quickly summoned, found
no difficulty in analyzing the situation.
Evidently the fowls had fed upon the fer
mented cherries, which l had thrown
where they could get them, and when we
had supposed them dead they were in
reality dead drunk. While we were asleep
they recovered and walked out of doors.
Happily none of them seemed to be in
jured at all by the process of plucking
they had just undergone. The hens kept
on laying just as well and the ROSTERS
were as proud as ever. In fact, my mother
afterward said that the feathers brought
her considerable profit, and she seemed
to think that perhaps chickens would yield
better returns as matter of ordinary bust
ness if they were deprived of their plumes,
like sheep of their wool, at judicious In
tervals. "-Washington Star.