The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1897-12-01

absolutely the only cleaning out that
fowl house has had in three years. Is
it any wonder this farmers hens don't
lay, and pullets don't grow? About
seventy -fve hens, pullets and cockerels
we're confined in that two-pen house
and yards during June, July and Au-
gust. Pullets couldn't possibly grow
under such handicap
We asked the farmer why he didn't |
clean out half dozen carloads of the |
sand floor of the houses, cart in fresh |
sand, clean up and whitewash the walls,
roosts, nests, etc. He said he had been |
intending to, but was too busy, couldn't |
find the tir very well, the other farm
work had given him all he could do.
That answer is representative of the
attitude of the average farmer towards
his fowls. The "other farm work"
takes precedence; 80 long as there is
anything else to do the fowl houses
can be let go, the fowls can be neglect
ed, Is it any wonder that "poultry
keeping don't pay, nohowl" This far
mer said his hens laid well the first
winter they were housed in those pens,
laid less well the second winter, and
that "last winter he hardly got an egg
all WINTER them well, tool" Can
we blame the fowls for not laying, COM
PEELED to live in such foul quarters as
those?
Some readers may ask how that
house could have been kept clean and
sweet, kept free from foul odors. BY
simply cleaning up the droppings two
or three times week, and cleaning up
the houses thoroughly once a year.
That is all we do on our farm, and our
poultry houses are as free from "odors,"
are as fresh, clean, and sweet as a new
house. We have houses which have
been in constant use for eight or ten
years, and are as clean and sweet to-
day as though newly built. We don't
take extraordinary pains to keep them
clean. We clean them out thoroughly
once year, carting off about three
inches of the top of the sand gravel
floor and carting in as much sand grav-
ell. We sweep down the walls and
whitewash thoroughly, whitewash nest
boxes, roosts, roost platforms, ETC., and
then move in the pullets from the fields.
Those pullets, moved into such fresh,
clean pens, are not poisoned by the ac-
cumulated foulness of several genera
tons of fowls. The pens are clean and
sweet, and the pullets begin Smelling
out the eggs, which are now Qast of
October) selling at the store at thirty
five cents dozen, and before Thanks
giving will be forty or forty-two cents
dozen. There is no magic, nothing
obscure or difficult about this; it is SIM
ply commonsense cleanliuessl The
roost platforms (droppings boards) we
clean off every day except Sunday in
fall, winter and spring, and every other
day in summer.
After scraping off the droppings a
handful of hand plaster (gypsum) is
scattered over the droppings boards,
more particularly along the parts where
the droppings accumulate. Dry loan,
road dust or finely sifted coal ashes
are good; but land plaster is one of the
best absorbents we have, and is par
ticularly good to absorb,the ammonia of
the droppings, and as it is worth the
price it costs for a fertilizer, we prefer
to buy and use land plaster. The
plaster is scraped off with the droppings
the mixture making very rich fertili-
ger, hence the cleanliness is doubly
profitable. The sand gravel of our pen
floors is raked off about once a month
when there is no straw for scratching
litter on it. In October we begin put
ting in unthreshed barley for scratching
material, adding to it from time to time
until there is four or five inches depth
of straw over the floor of the pen; then
rake it all off to add to the manure heap
in the cellar, and begin putting in a
fresh supply. The straw is renewed
about three times during the winter
months, the sand gravel is raked off
| ha nfh ar Mt he
of the year.
MATCHING CHICKENS LATE.
Having occasion to drive about a
dozen miles one afternoon this week,
we counted the farms where were
chickens half grown or less, and four
farms out of five of the twenty-five or
thirty which we observed showed a
couple of dozen of those young chicks,
a third to half grown. Those late
Matched chicks will never be good for
anything. They won't grow to any
thing near normal full size, and the
pullets will probably begin to lay about
March, when eggs are at the lowest
price of the year, and pay almost no
profit. A growing chick overtaken by
the cold of our New England November
and December is one of the sorriest
sights in the world. The baby frame
(and flesh) hasn't hardened into matur-
ity, and the cold seems to "shrink" it,
80 to speak, and the shivering young
sters huddle together in the most des-
pairing attitudes.
"The evil that men do lives after
Them" and the evil of those late hatch
ed chicks lives after them. Late
Matched and late maturing chicks beget
more late Matched and late maturing
chicks, and 80 the generation of this
year entails its appropriateness upon
the chickens of next year, "and so on
unto the third and fourth generation"
1t is the early Matched pullets that fully
mature before cold weather, aud COM
mence laying when eggs sell at price
that pays the creamy profits, and that
next spring go broody early so we can
hatch another generation of early
chickens to grow into another flock of
early layers. There is method in our
we'll worn :-"Hatch the chickens