The Florida agriculturist., 1907-05-15
Chickens as Members of the Family.

that a man was here not long ago
who had been burnt out in Georgia
and was soliciting help to build up
again. He said some gave him ten
cents, some five cents and some one
cent. One cent, he added, would help
some. Who could resist such inn
portuning as that? And so you say
in substance, "If you cannot give us
whole page Or half page or a
column, send an idea on a postal
card"
[ have read Of people who could
copy the whole of the Declaration
of Independence on a postal card,
but my eyes are not fitted for such
fine work. So I take my pen in one
hand and a tablet of writing paper
in the other and wade in But what
shall the subject be?
Suppose we call it "Hens." Have
kept hens in Florida almost twenty
years, and as the man told the two
for him, 1--WE shall try to use you
as one Of the family" so we have
come to think of Our flock of twenty
hens, as one of the family; and might
as we'll say right here, that if there
is any secret in making from forty to
fifty per cent on eggs, that is it, You
wouldn't think of letting one of the
family suffer with insects if such a
thing could be avoided, and I was
very fortunate in having a carpenter
to build my first hen house that
knew how. The ends of the house
where the hens roasted extended out
over the ground, and chicken wire
was tackled on underneath the roosts
for the dropping to go through. The
house was built of one by three, and
the strips left three inches apart
everywhere but over the roosts where
they were put tight together. With
such a house, and the roosts sprayed
with kerosene occasionally, there will
be no lice or feas or jiggers Then
you wouldn't think of giving one of
the family raw food, and so when we
have turnip tops, cabbage, potato
pealings, or sweet potatoes, of which
they are very fond, it is all cooked
with bit of pork to give it RELISH
Their main food, however, is corn
and wheat, though I might add that
they eat good deal of St. Augustine
and St. Lucie grasses.
The first ten or twelve years Of my
keeping hens, I thought I must have
the pure breeds, SO tried the Black
Spanish, the Brown and White Leg
horns, the Barred Plymouth Rocks,
and some others. Found the Leg
horns the best layers, but Brown Leg
horns are too wild and scarey, the
Plymouth Rocks, too lazy, and yet,
too fat to lay in couple of years.
So I tried mixing the Plymouth
Rocks with the Leghorns, and have so
intermixed them for several years. [
find as the years go on that the breed
is running more and more to Black,
showing, I think, that the Plymouth
Rocks were bred from a breed of
blacks. I am saving all the black
pulletS, as I am persuaded that the
woman knew what. she was talking
about when she asked the grocer if
he had any black hens eggs. He said
basket full, said, ''If you can tell
two dozen of the largest there were
them.
Another thing about this mixed
breed that like, the hens all differ
one from the other, and we hear no
such talk as this: Zone of those
Plymouth Rock hens is sitting on
porcelain egg in No. I COOP" or
Zone of the White Leghorns flew
over that six foot wire fence this
morning." for now every hen has a
name, and one could have heard at
the able this morning something like
this: "'Dixie' came off with ten
chicks" or "'Go1d Eye laid again,