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THE S EM L-MO NTH LY MAGAZINE SECTION
Hens that Cut
me Cost of Living
By Edward I.Farrmgton
Illustrations from Photographs
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Some eggs, be it known, cost about as
much to produce as Horace Greeley's
nroverbial notntocs. and that was one
I j jjf-1 dollar each. There are fancy fowls
'-' ' HI domiciled in luxurious houses that lay
hardly enough eggs to pay for the
gi'nin they eat. Neither fine houses nor line feathers
necessarily make fine birds. Hens ure as democratic
as Yankees. If left to their own devices, they will
sleep in the trees. Make them hustle for a living, and
they will lay like machines. Coddle them, and they
will grow fat, lazy and shiftless.
The hens that lay arc the hens that pay, of course.
You will find such hens in modest little llocks all over
the country, busily cutting the cost of living for their
owners. When, in cackling self-complacency, they
emerge from their mid-winter nests, each leaves the
equivalent of a nickel behind her. Whether eaten or
sold, eggs at a nickel apiece help to cut the grocer's
bill and to reduce the profits of the meat trust.
Over ninety per cent of all tho eggs produced in
this country como from the farms and the back yards.
Only hero and there is
there a success! ul spe
cialized egg plant. And
between an undeveloped
Montana gold mine and
a commercial poultry
proposition, why, you
can loso your money in
one as quickly as in the
other. On the other hand,
a small Hock well cared
for will pay substantial
dividends. Biddy of the
back yard holds the key
io uio sanation, btiu is
doing nobly now; but sho ought to do better. The
number of eggs annually produced should be half as
largo again, without increasing the number of birds.
The bigger yield will como with more intelligent man
agement. This, in itself, will help to make table sup
plies cheaper; for eggs and poultry will, more and
more, bo substituted for other food products.
Few pcoplo realize that iho poultry business, as it
stands, is one of the most important industries in the
country. Tho value of the poultry and egg crop each
year is several hundred million dollars. Some sixteen
billion eggs are laid each year by the great American
hen, which number placed end to etui would make a
belt across the continent. Some years, the country's
poultry products havo been worth more than its com
bined output of gold and silver. The business is so
big that the great western packing houses have taken
it under their wings, picking up the eggs from the
farmers and putting them safely into cold storage
until they can bo shipped to market just when the
price is right, no doubt. It is a fact, though, that eggs
so handled reach the consumer in better shape than
those that pass through tho hands of tho country
grocer. The latter, taking them in exchange for sugar
and calico, imposes no age limits, providing they do
not speak for themselves like the chicken that peeped
as Miko broke a raw egg into his mouth. You know
the story? Mike, a bit startled, gulped, choked and
promptly ejaculated: "Begorra, yo spoke too late!"
While Indian Runner Ducks prolific layers
Incubator bouse of terra cotta hollow tila
In the Petaluina district of California, some two
million fowls are distributed over an area of twenty
square miles. Several million dozen eggs are sent out
every year from this city alone. Petaluma is a city
that was practically built by hens a city where
raw materials are converted into eggs at the .ate of
$457 worth an hour for ten hours a day, Sundays
and holidays included; for the Sabbatical system is
not recognized by the hen.
But to get back to our little flock in the back yard.
When hens are kept in large numbers, they are ex
pected to pay a profit of a dollar a head. Tho back
yard Hock should pay twice as much. Here are two
actual experiences: A suburban family kept fifteen
pullets in a home-made poultry house, fed tho table
scraps supplemented with grain, and made a net
profit of fifty dollars. Another family housed eight
Ancona pullets in a ten-dollar coop, and had all the
eggs needed for household use and some to sell during
a winter that was unusually severe. Thousands of
families are having experiences of this sort. It is a
practical way to beat the middleman, or whoever is
responsible for things ns they are.
Along with simplified spelling and sim
plified brick laying, we have simplified
poultry keeping, which is a fine thing for
the amateur with a little laud and less
knowledge. No longer is it necessary to mix
a wet mash every morning.
Nowadays, a dry mash
which is another term for
dry ground grains mixed
and with beef scraps added
is dumped into a hopper
and placed where the liens
can consult their own sweet
will about eating it.
No longer is it necessary
to puzzle over balanced rations. All
dealers now sell prepared combina
tions of cracked grains, scientifically
blended. Most hens will speedily un
balance any sort of ration; for they
pick out tho kinds of food they relish
in a way that is almost human. But it
is reassuring to tho poultry keeper to start right,
especially after he has read some learned bulletin on
tho subject.
It is no longer necessary to pore over poultry house
plans and to hire a carpenter to execute them, nor
even to hammer one's thumb in an effort to nieta
morphoso a piano box into a hen coop. Beady-made,
portablo poultry bouses are especially well adapted
to the needs of small flocks. They are found very
convenient by tho man who rents his home, for the
reason that they can be knocked down and loaded
into a wagon whenever it becomes desirable to change
one's domicile.
And, be it remembered, it is not now necessary
even to have a yard for the hens. This reduces the
problem of keeping poultry to its lowest terms. It
is quite possible to confine a flock for months at a
time, if tho houso is so arranged that fresh air may
be admitted freely and if a deep litter is used to
cover tho floor, so that the birds will be compelled
to work for what they eat just as if they were hunt
ing bugs in the fields. It is true that this method of
keeping poultry has limitations. No one
is advised to breed trom hens housed so
closely. The wiso plan is to sell all the
hens in the summer as they ccaso to lay.
and to start afresh with well-matured
pullets in the fall. Then, all the work
and bother incidental to the raising of
chickens is done away with, and there is
no need to maintain a rooster with the
flock a feature of tho plan that will ap
peal to non-poult ry-keeping neighbors.
Although this close-housing system is
tho only one that is practicable under
some conditions, it has one serious dis-
White Leghorns thi
breed for eggs
Buff Orpingtons - equally good as layers and tablo fowl
advantage, in that the poultry keeper cannot develop
a heavy-laying strain of his own, as is possible when
he can select his most prolific hens for breeders and
raiso his own chicks. The incubator and the brooder
have simplified this part of the business of poultry
keeping, too. Hens like Leghorns, which never sit
on their eggs, are reared almost exclusively in many
sections of the country. They compel one to use
machines, or to comb the countryside for broody old
Plymouth Bocks and Wyandottes.
One remarkable feature of the modern incubator
is tho elasticity of its usefulness. The man with a
few liens invests in a fifty-egg machine and runs it
in his living-room, while the man with a big plant
installs a mammoth incubator capable of hatching
thousands of eggs at a time. The big man burns coal.
Tho little man uses kerosene, gas or electricity. Qas
and electricity economize labor, and may be used
where the insurance regulations bar oil.
Egypt had mnmmoth hatching machines thousands
of years ago. If Cleopatra fed Anthony on anything
so commonplace as chicken, probably tho choice
young birds pipped their shells in a big oven-shaped,
clay incubator. We, in America, have caught up
with Egypt at last; and coincident
with the development of tho mam
moth hatching machine, havo come
two new lines of industry custom
hatching and the sale of baby chicks.
The back-yard poultry keeper finds
something in both to interest him.
Both help to make amateur poultry
keeping easy. '
Suppose you have a strain of Co
lumbian Wyandottes that you want
to perpetuate. You select your
hatching eggs with duo care from
your best pens, and express them
to the custom hatcher. Twenty-two
or twenty-three days later, the ex
pressman delivers the baby chicks to
you. Simple, isn't it? And yet, revolutionary 1 Who
knows to what end this plan will lead? In the course
of a few years, every well-populated county may
have several mammoth machines, where tho hatching
for all tho small poultry keepers will be done. Such
nn arrangement would come very near to duplicating
the Egyptian custom; for there, one or two men do
the hatching for a whole community. With a little
imagination, one can picture hatching stations along
side the creameries all over the country. This branch
of the poultry industry is still in swaddling clothes;
but a rapid growth is promised.
Every deice or practice that helps to increase the
amount of the country's poultry products will be an
aid in cutting tho cost of living; and, as tho supply
is far behind the demand, it can bo done without
affecting tho returns of tho poultry keeper. Bemem
ber that eggs are being imported from countries so
far away as China.
Tho sale of day-old chicks is another interesting
development. Baby chicks require no food for forty
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A type of freshair house now growing in favor