The Florida agriculturist., 1906-02-28

food; but it makes a great difference
whether a man takes care of 800 or
1000 hens. 1t is only by cutting out
the unnecessary details under which
most poultry plants are swamped that
"A good profit can be obtained.
have had one object in view during
my last few years in handling poultry,
and that is, to find way of feeding
that should practically eliminate the
intelligence of the attendant as a fac
tor i'm the situation. l felt that if l
could solve this question, L could make
real commercial proposition of my
poultry The one thing that stood in
the way of branching out indinitely
was the impOssibility of finding men,
at a price 1 could afford to pay, who
had the brain power necessary to
handle wet mash to advantage.
They either fed too much, or too little.
Hens either did not lay, because they
were too fat, or they did not lay be-
cause they did not get enough to eat.
Moreover, | was never quite sure
whether it was the feeding of the
mash that was at fault, or something
else All 1 knew was that the hens
did not lay eggs enough, that some
were too fat and others too thin, and
that l guessed it was the mash, or
lack of it, that caused the trouble. 1
felt that as long as my 500 hens were
keeping me guessing, it would be poor
policy to have more. But 1 wanted
more So 1 took one of my wild
flights from the regulation course. 1
made up my mind that l would fly
high enough so, if my wings gave out,
the poultry world would hear from me
no more That's what 1 did, but you
see l am here to tell about it.
UNNECESSARY LABOR ELIMI-
MATED.
The poultry books tell us that one
man can properly handle 500 hens;
that if he is a hustler, he can handle
twice as many. He must feed wet
mash once a day, clean of rOost
| boards once a day, give warm water
for drinking in cold weather and clear
out all old litter from the pens every
two or three weeks, replacing it with
new. There are multitude of other
details to which he must attend, most
of which | believed to be unnecessary.
The labor account of my plant had TO
come down. In order to get it down
some of these details had to be elimi-
mated Why not throw overheard the
whole system and begin anew? The
more l thought of it the better pleased
| was with the idea.
| had heard more or less about the
dry feeding method, and determined to
try it. l did not know just what eX-
perimenting had been done along that
line, so | placed some buShel boxes in
the pens and filled them half full of
the mixture of which l usually made
the wet mash. l was pleased to find
that the hens ate the dry mixture with
a relish. Then l pulled out all the
drOppings boards. setting one of the
boards on edge upon the ground foot
outside a perpendicular dropped from
the front rOOSt, and parallel to the
roosts | gave cold water to drink. L
left the old litter on the floors. l fed
a little green stuff at noon, usually a
handful of enSilage to every five hens.
Any time after the middle of the after
noon | scattered i'm the litter pint of
either oats, cracked corn or barley to
every five hens. | picked up the eggs
at night. A little land plaster was
thrown under the roOStS twice week,
and some new straw thrown into the
pens every two weeks. Nothing was
done at fixed hours. Nobody went
near the pens before 9 O'Clock in the
dow hn