The Florida agriculturist., 1907-11-06

kind is absolutely necessary. Then the
will of the worker will master every
difficulty and failure becomes lmposs1-
bic. Every loss is an object lesson,
every disappointment goad to further
effort. Sometimes one will meet with
an almost overwhelming loss. A
brother of the writer lost nearly all OF
his fine young stock one fall by weas-
els gaining entrance into the chicken
house. Many of the fowls were dead,
others were slowly bleeding to death,
while those that were unharmed were
walking about in dazed condition. 1t
was a sad sight-one seasons work
destroyed in night But he never
thought of giving up, but began again
and met with abundant success along
broader lines than he had hoped for.
Rats are great source OF loss.
They will crawl through small open
ing and carry off chicks and steal eggs
from under sitting hens. Larger chicks
they will leave half devoured.
Floors should be made perfectly tight
and all openings in chicken coops
covered with wire netting. But on
badly infested places rats will run out
in the day time and seize chickens.
Cats will destroy rats wherever they
can reach their hiding places. We
have seen seven large rats lying dead
at one time that the cat had killed
during the night. Whenever rat hole
was found we would set a steel trap
close to the hole and place small
box over it with rock on top to pre-
vent the hens from turning the box
over.
In the country coyotes have to be
guarded against, as they often get
very bold and come up close to the
premises and carry off chickens. The
remedy is to fence in the yards with
strong wire netting. One will save
enough stock in year to pay for the
fence. A lady in Washington wrote
that the coyotes had killed nearly all
their chickens every year. They had
incubators and Matched a good many
chicks, so it had been quite loss to
them, and that now they were going
to keep their poultry confined. Where
coyoes are known to be troublesome
it is wiser to take precautionary
measures before meeting with the loss
that is inevitable When hens have
free range they like to lay out in the
weeds, and if chicks are Matched both
the hen and chicks are likely to be
killed by varmints.
In some localities butcher birds de-
stroy a good many small chicks. One
woman said she had lost as many as
fifteen in one day. The chicks were
running about in an orchard some dis
tance from the house. To protect
chicks from them and the hawks they
should be confined in low Wire-c covered
runs until a few weeks old, but if
hawks are very troublesome it will be
necessary to keep the chicks in yards
near the house. Some people raise
their chicks to maturity without ever
giving them their liberty, but it is
natural and best for growing chicks
to have free range if possible.
Hatching is most always attended
with more or less loss whether 1ncu-
bators are used or the natural meth
3D. Accidents are less likely to oc-
cur with incubators, but the loss is
greater when anything does go wrong.
Sometimes at Matching time the wick
| is accidentally turned up or the regu-
lator interfered with so that the
chicks are almost literally cooked just
when a fine hatch was expected A
poor hatch may occur if there is too
much moisture which causes the over
development of the chick and they die
in the shell, or from lack of moisture
when the lining Of the shell becomes
tough and dry and the chick unable
to break through. If the temperature
vo riac rorCh either wav and condi