The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1896-06-20

SufneQ name Oh NILS i1S - SuPPOoSN
to have committed suicide, but the
coroner is Investigating.
PROFITABLE POULTRY KEEPING.
Waldo F. Brown, a prominent writer on
agricultural topics, gives in the Louisville
Home and Farm, some excellent sugges-
tons on the profitable management of
poultry. He says:
From my boyhocd. have taken a great
interest in poultry, and have found 1t uni
formly profitable. 1 think that when there
are six or eight persons in a family and
eggs and poultry are used freely that this
alone will ordinarily pay for the food of
100 hens, so that AL that is sold may be
counted as profit and even though poul-
try products are low, good sum OF
money can be had during a year from 100
hens. We have been selling eggs for some
weeks past at S cents a dozen, which is
about as low as they ever get, but we
have averaged thirty dozen week, which
bring $40, and the cost of keeping our
hens is not far from so cents a week. I
feed my hens just as regularly and as
carefully as l do my work horses, giving
them always two feeds day, and when
/ do not let them out of the yards, three
feeds. Once a day they are fed soft feed,
made of a mixture of equal amounts of
corn meal and bran mixed and about a
pint of oil meal to a peck of the bran
and corn meal mixture. The best way is
to stir the oil meal into hot water or milk
first and then thcken with the corn meal
and BRAN think no more profitable use
can be made of the skim milk and butter
milk than to use 1t for wetting up the
feed and also for the hens to drink. | can
buy wheat screenings usually for IS per
ton, and / watch the mill. and when find
an Unusually good lot / buy a ton or
more at once and store it for future use,
and | feed this in the morning, the soft
food at noon and whole corn at night.
During the fall and winter we use refuse
cabbage and feeds. unstable apples
chopped sweet potatoes and beets, and in
summer we make large use of lettuce and
beets sown thicl<ly so as to make a large
growth of leaves.
This green food is very cheap and ex-
ceilent and when fowls are confined it is
almost Indispensable. and is especially
good for young chickens and ducks There
should be on every farm yard tthe larg-
er the better, but fifty feet or it's equiva-
lent will answer) in connection with each
poultry house, so that when necessary the
hens can be kept shut up. for there NAV
be times when they viii do great damage
among stra wbefries, melons or tomatoes,
and when they are shut up there should
always be supply of green food for
them. Fowls need plenty of good pure
water, and not only suffer if this is neg
lected, but also stop laying l give each
fifty hens q bucket full of fresh water
three times ay. ! keep Pelin ducks as
hens, and | have the yard within about
twenty feet of a stock well, and arrange
so that all the waste water flows from
the pump into trough in the duck yard,
and as the well is used several times a
day, the ducks always have a supply of
fresh water. We make a fence five feet
high to restrain our hens, and three feet
high for ducks. 1t can be made cheaply.
either of common plasterer's lath, or of
woven wire. / buy lath at 30 cents per
hundred. and one hundred will make TWEEN
ty-five feet of fence, but there must be a
base board a foot wide to give the fence
and Will no
saIry to crop one wing of the hens to keep
them in. The woven wire fence costs 20
cents rod for a two-foot web. and 40
cents for four feet making the first cost
more than 1ath, but 1t is more durable
and the posts can be further apart and
in the long run the wire is the cheapest
We use the foot-wide base board with the
duck fence. which makes it three feet
high. Feed can be given on the ground
In dry, pleasant weather. but it is best to
have plenty of troughs to use when neces-
sary. When the hens are kept shut up
1t is good plan to let them out in the
evening for an hour, as they will pick up
any waste food that has been scattered,
and eat grass. and are not likely to do
any damage, and will all go back to the
house to rooSt
To keep hens healthy in confinement,
they must be furnished gravel and lime
in the form of crushed oyster shells or
old plaster, and q good dust bath. The
nest boxes Should be all movable, so that
they can be carried out and emptied and
tIedteu Win kerosene or caTDOIlc acid. II
there are signs of lice. / never leave any
nest eggs IN the boxes. for I have found
by years of experience without them that
they are not necessary, as the hens lay
just as well without them. and nest eggs
often freeze or become soiled. We make
a row of continuous spaces for nests
along the north side of the poultry house,
I the south side being largely occupied by
windows.
The spaces are made thirteen inches
wide and sixteen inches deep, from
front TO rear, so that box foot wide
can be slipped in and out easily. There
is no floor to these spaces. as this would
be a place for lice to breed and dust to
accumulate, and we keep a large sur
Plus of nest boxes, SO that when a hen
wishes to set we can take her out in her
box and slip in a fresh box. The boxes
rest on cleats at the sides of the space.
My nest boxes cose about cents each.
send my carpenter to the grocery with in
structions to make me certain number
of light boxes of half-inch pine and he
often finds plenty of just the right width.
so that cutting off one end and replacing
the end board is all that is necessary, or
perhaps ripping deep box will make
two of 1t. 1 had twelve made recently.
and the carpenters charge was 40 cents,
| and the boxes cost % cents. We do not
succeed we'll in setting our hens in the
| house, and so we move them to other
rooms when we wish them to set. l have
loft over hog house, where can put
| ten, a smokehouse that accommodates
four, a room 6 by s at the end of one
! poultry house that SIX can occupy, and
! we have six rooms in a poultry house for
/ small chickens, each of which we can
/ put four nest boxes in.
When the rooms are not occupied with
young chickens. l formerly found trouble
/ in moving the hens to their new nests, as
often a third or fourth of them would re-
I fuse to occupy the new nest, and would
break eggs and disturb the other hens,
! but I learned that If the eggs were put
under the hens in the boxes in the house
, about the middle of the afternoon, after
most of the hens were done laying for the
day and then, after dark, the hen COW
cred with a cloth and carried in the box
( on her eggs to the new place, that she
I would give no trouble. The care of poul-
try is pleasant and may be made profit
able work for the farmer who feels that
he is no longer able to do general field
work. He can commit that to younger
and stronger hands, and can lind pleasure
and profit among mis- fowls The more
common plan ON the farm, regret to
say is for the man to look upon the
chicken business" as beneath his notice
and leave the entire care of the poultry
to his wife, already often overburdened
with work. and that. too. without provid-
ing her with and conveniences. The man
who does this does not deserve to have
fresh eggs and tender chickens to eat,
but should be fed on tale eggs-scrambled
and boiled crow or fat pork.
FARM AND GARDEN NOTES.
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