Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1899-03-09

When mating your fowls in the
spring.have an eve to results. Some
people raise chickens as others make
rag-carpets, that is, on the .'hit and
miss plan. AS result they have a
flock OF shit and miss" looking fowls,
which often fail to score a single hit.
There is neither fancy" nor money
in such matings. 1t costs from fifty
cents to one dollar year to feed each
fowl: therefore you should be very
careful in selecting the breeding stock.
If you have flock OF say one hun
dred hens. don't be foolish enough to
keep ten or fifteen male birds. Wire
netting is very cheap. Make good
run on some good dry place large
enough for ten or fifteen fowls. Shut
your hens up some day where you can
catch them easily. Take little time
and pick out ten to fifteen OF the very
best ones, those that come nearest be-
inc ,,our ideals. Put them into this
run with as good male bird as you
have or the best you can buy. reed
and care for this pen OF fowls as they
should be cared for and save all their
eggs for setting purposes. In raising
chicks from this pen you will easily
see YOU are gaining years of time in
breeding up your flock to what they
should be. Turn out the remainder
of the hens and kill or sell all the male
birds because they are absolutely
damage to you. The pullets will lay
two months earlier in the fall and
will lay 20 per cent more eggs IN
year if they never see a male bird.
Besides this the eggs which are un-
fertile will keep much longer and bet
ter than the fertile ones. 1t only re-
quires 80 to 100 degrees OF heat to
hatch an egg. How often have you
seen the eggs in the pantry behind
the kitchen stove in summer wnere
the heat was over 80 and you wonder
ed why the eggs spoiled so quickly
Subject an unfertile egg to l03 de-
grees of heat for twenty-one days and
You will be surprised at the clearness
of il when you break the egg.
In mating up your pens always
have some we'll defined object in view.
For in stance, if you have flock OF
Plymouth Rocks and wish to breed
them up nearer standard" birds Sc
lect STANDARD" male of the same
breed. If you have mixed flock ana
wish to breed them up to better lay
ing hens introduce male OF any OF
the best thorough-bred strains oil egg
products. When you cross with new
blood YOU are one step ahead but when
l.
step back.
When YOU have the pen mated up
to suit You then you should care for
them as YOU would for any other
stock. They should not be fed so as
To become too fat. Remember whlle
they are shut up, which will be ior
three months. they must be provided
with all necessary food-grain OF some
kind. scraps from the table, plenty OF
fresh, clean water and milk, grit ana
shell materials and plenty OF some
thing green. The eggs will not hatch
well from the best pen of fowls you
can get if they are neglected
One of the best plans for furnishing
something green after the grass starts
is to take spade and cut good green
sods and throw into them. The sod
will enable them to crop the grass IN
lengths as they want it. Fresh grass
FROM the lawn mower is better than
none but not nearly so good as the
sod. Two pens well seeded to rye IS
very good. When they get one picked
down close turn them into the other
and let the first get new start. How
ever hens will soon foul any pen and
the only sure plan is to provide tor
them while in the breeding pen