Our Domestic Birds Part 7

=Coops for broods.= The coop for a hen and chickens should be so constructed that they will have plenty of fresh air at night. There should be a small run attached to it, to which the hen can be confined while the chickens run about or come to her to be brooded, as they may wish. It is not a good plan to let a hen run with her brood while the chicks are very small. The chickens do much better if the mother is confined and gives more attention to keeping them warm than to feeding them. The coops should not be placed in the same spot year after year, nor should they be on land upon which the old fowls run during any considerable portion of the year. Sod ground is best.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 94. Coop to be used with runs, as in Fig. 95]

=Feeding young chickens.= From early times in America the most common food for young chickens has been corn meal moistened with water. When fresh this is a good food for chickens that run about and eat a great deal of green food, insects, worms, and small seeds, but a mash of scalded corn meal and bran, such as is given old fowls, or a baked johnnycake, is better. There is no need of fussing with such foods as finely chopped hard-boiled eggs, cracker crumbs, pinhead oatmeal, and other things often recommended as most appropriate for the first feeds of little chicks. Healthy hen-hatched chicks raised by the natural method on a farm need nothing but one soft feed (such as has been mentioned) in the morning, a little hard grain toward evening, and then, just before dark, all the soft food they will eat. The best grain for them is sound cracked corn; the next best is wheat. The chickens should have good water always before them, and may be given all the milk they want. Skim milk, sour milk (either thin or clabbered), and b.u.t.termilk are all eaten with relish and promote health and growth. Vessels in which milk is given must be cleaned often or they will become very filthy.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 95. Coops and runs for hens and chicks[11]]

[11] Burlap bags are used to shade the interior or to keep out rain.

When not in use they are turned back on the top of the coop.

=Management of growing chicks.= Of course, healthy chickens are growing all the time, and growing at a very rapid rate, too; but after the chicks are weaned, they have usually reached the point in growth when the increase in size in a short period is very noticeable. So poultry keepers commonly speak of chickens from weaning time until maturity as growing chicks. At this time the rudest kind of shelter will suit them as well as any. Indeed, they hardly need shelter from the weather at all. The most essential things are a good range, apart from the old fowls, and an abundance of food. They should be able to pick up a great deal of food for themselves, but should have enough given them to make sure that they always have all the food they can eat. It does not pay to stint them to make them forage farther. Young chickens will always take all the exercise that they need if they have the opportunity, and the more they eat the better they grow.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 96. Small house for growing chicks, in Maine orchard]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 97. Small house for growing chicks, in orchard in New York State]

When the range near their coops ceases to afford them good picking, the coops should be moved to a place where the food to be secured by foraging is more abundant.

LARGE STOCKS ON GENERAL FARMS

When farmers in America began to keep larger stocks of fowls, the most common practice nearly everywhere was to increase the general flock until there were far too many fowls on the land that they would usually forage over. Under such conditions fowls on the farm were not profitable. They damaged every crop to which they had access, and made the farm most unsightly in the vicinity of the dwelling house. Then some farmers would reduce the flock and return to the old practice of keeping only a few dozen hens, while others would adopt the city plan of building houses with many compartments and keeping the fowls yarded in small flocks. This plan was usually abandoned within a few years, because, while it worked very well in the winter, when the farmer had time to give the hens extra care, they were not as well off in the summer, when the farmer had to give attention to his field crops first.

Such was the usual course of development of farm methods of managing fowls.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 98. Stone poultry house about two hundred years old, on farm of F. W. C. Almy, Tiverton Four Corners, Rhode Island]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 99. Rhode Island colony poultry house for thirty-five fowls]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 100. Colony poultry houses on Rhode Island farm]

=The colony system.= But occasionally a farmer whose flock had outgrown its accommodations as one flock would divide it, moving a part to another place on the farm, and so was able to maintain the increase in numbers without adopting laborious methods. This idea was carried out most systematically and most extensively in the vicinity of Little Compton, Rhode Island, where the Rhode Island Red fowl originated. The first settlers in this part of Rhode Island built large stone poultry houses like that shown in Fig. 98. Some of these old buildings are still used for poultry. This district is most favorably situated for poultry keeping. The snow rarely lies long, and the birds can be outdoors nearly every day in winter as well as in summer. Being near the fashionable summer resort of Newport, the farmers here early found a large demand for their eggs and poultry at high prices in the summer time, when in many places the prices were low. Then in the winter they could send eggs to Boston and Providence, which were the best markets in the country for this cla.s.s of produce. So these farmers had every inducement to devise a practical method of indefinitely increasing their stocks of fowls. The plan which they adopted was very simple. Small houses, which could easily be moved from place to place with a two-horse team, and which would accommodate from twenty-five to thirty-five fowls, were made and distributed over the farm. Sometimes these houses were placed in pastures not suitable for mowing or for cultivation and remained there permanently, but as a rule they were moved from time to time to suit the rotation of crops on the farm. As the number of these houses on a farm increased, and they were spread over a larger area and sometimes placed in fields and pastures a long distance from the farmhouse, the work of caring for the fowls, even by the simple method used, became too heavy to be done by man power alone, and a horse and cart was used in carrying food and water, collecting eggs, and moving chicks and fowls from one part of the farm to another. Thus the work was put on a very economical basis, and keeping fowls by this method became a common feature of the farming of this section of Rhode Island. The methods used here have changed little, if at all, since the system was started sixty or seventy years ago. The system is so primitive that people who are familiar with more elaborate methods often imagine that the Rhode Island farmer, who does so well by his simple methods, would certainly do very much better if he applied more of the modern ideas. But the test of time has demonstrated that this simple colony system is easily made permanent, while most of the more ambitious and complex systems either fail utterly or have but a transient success.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 101. Collecting eggs on Rhode Island farm. The little girl is in the box in which dough is carried in the morning]

=Numbers of hens kept.= The number of hens kept on a farm in this section varies from four or five hundred to over two thousand. Stocks of from eight hundred to twelve hundred are most common. The princ.i.p.al object is to produce market eggs, but as the two-year-old hens and the c.o.c.kerels that are not needed for breeding purposes are sold every year, the receipts from the sale of live poultry are sometimes considerable.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 102. Colony houses at Michigan Agricultural College.

(Photograph from the college)]

=Feeding, care, and results.= The hens, being well distributed over the farm, pick a large part of their living. Hard grain (usually cracked corn) is kept always before them in the house, in hoppers which will hold a bag of grain each. Once a day, in the morning, the hens are given a feed of mash (or, as it is called in this locality, dough) of about the same composition as the mash described on page 89. The dough is cooked in a large iron set-kettle in the evening and left there until it is to be fed the next morning. Then it is loaded into boxes or large tubs on a cart. The cart also carries a barrel of water. As he reaches each house the driver, with a shovel, throws what dough the hens need on the gra.s.s near the house. Then he fills the water pail and drives on to the next house. The hens require no more attention until evening, when the man collects the eggs and gives more water where it is necessary.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 103. Moving one of the houses in Fig. 102]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 104. Colony houses at Iowa Agricultural College.

(Photograph from the college)]

Some of the smaller stocks of fowls on these farms--flocks that have been selected with care and are given a little more attention than is usual--give an average annual production of eleven or twelve dozen eggs a hen, but the general average is only eight or nine dozen. Although the profit per hen is small, the compensation for labor and investment is better than on most poultry plants where a much greater product per hen is secured. Even when eggs are the most important money crop on the farm, the care of the laying hens is but a small part of the day's work of the man who looks after them.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 105. Colony houses at Hampton Inst.i.tute]

=How the chickens are grown.= The number of chickens reared each year on one of these colony farms is usually about equal to the number of fowls kept. Where there are so many hens of a sitting variety, and very early hatching is not practiced, there is rarely any shortage of sitting hens at the time when they are wanted. Usually twenty or thirty hens are set at the same time, and it is expected that they will hatch eight or ten chickens each. Sometimes sixty or seventy hens are set at one time. As it is almost always quite warm when the chickens are hatched, it is customary to give each hen twenty or more chickens. The coops are placed in rows, several rods apart each way, on a piece of gra.s.sland that has had no poultry on it for a year or more. Most of the farmers are very particular on this point, and prefer to put the young chickens on land on which there has been no poultry for at least two years. They have learned by experience that under such conditions they can rear a much larger percentage of the chickens hatched, and that the chickens will grow more evenly and mature earlier. In planning the field crops grown on the farm they always try to arrange so that the small chickens may have fresh land not too far from the farmhouse; land seeded to gra.s.s the year before is best.

The chickens are fed the same dough as is given to the hens, but are fed oftener. They have a second meal of dough about noon, and their grain supply, which is given in small troughs, is replenished frequently.

While the hens are with the chickens the food is placed where the hen confined to the coop can get her share. After the hens are taken away, the dough is thrown on the gra.s.s as the cart pa.s.ses up and down the rows of coops.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 106. Coop for hen and chicks, used on Rhode Island farm]

When the hay has been harvested and the corn has grown tall, a part of the young chickens may be removed from the land where they were started, and the coops placed where they can forage on mowing lands, in cornfields, and wherever they can go without damage to a growing crop.

As they become too crowded in the small coops, the c.o.c.kerels are sold and, if there are still too many birds in a coop, a few pullets are taken from each of the overcrowded coops and new colonies are started, so far from their old a.s.sociates that they will not find their way back.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 107. Colony house for growing chicks, at Macdonald College. (Photograph from the college)]

In the early fall as many of the oldest hens are sold as is necessary to vacate the houses needed for the pullets reared that season. Then the houses are thoroughly cleaned. (They may not have been cleaned before for six months or a year.) If a house is to be moved to a new location, the change is usually made at this time. One or two cartloads of clean sand are put into each house, to make the floor higher than the ground outside and to provide an absorbent for the droppings which are allowed to acc.u.mulate. When they are brought to the house, which will probably be their home as long as they live, the pullets are confined to the house, or a small temporary yard is attached to it, so that they cannot wander away. After a few days of confinement they accept the new home as their headquarters.

=Adaptability of the colony system.= The colony system as developed in Rhode Island attracted little attention elsewhere until very recent years. Since about 1900 many descriptions of it have been published, and numerous efforts have been made to adapt features of this system to operations in other localities. The princ.i.p.al obstacles to this are snow and predacious animals. Where snow lies deep for months it is not practical to keep fowls in widely distributed flocks in winter. In some places the plan of distributing the houses in summer and parking them (that is, placing them close together in a regular order) in winter has worked very well. Where wild animals are numerous, colony methods cannot be extensively applied, but on most farms a limited application of the system will greatly increase the amount of poultry that can profitably be kept.

In England many farmers use smaller colony houses than those in use in Rhode Island, and move them often, not letting a house stand in the same spot long enough to kill the gra.s.s. Some of the houses used in this way are provided with small wheels. The advantage of moving houses often is greatest when the fowls are on good arable land, upon which there are, or will be, crops that can utilize the manure which the birds leave on the land. If the houses are moved methodically, the fertilizer will be evenly distributed.

INTENSIVE POULTRY FARMS

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 108. Colony houses in foreground; sheds for ducks beyond. (Photograph from Bureau of Animal Industry, United States Department of Agriculture)]

=Reasons for concentration.= In the early days of the poultry fancy in this country the tendency was for each fancier to keep as many different varieties as he could find room for or could afford to buy. Most of these fanciers were city people who thought that, as they kept their fowls in small flocks anyway, they might just as well have as many different kinds of poultry as they had separate compartments in their poultry yards. When rich men with large estates became interested in fancy poultry, they usually built large houses containing many small pens, each with its small yard, and bought a few of each known variety.

By far the greater part of the choicest poultry was kept in small inclosures, and the flocks that laid remarkably well were usually city flocks that were given good care. This seemed to a great many people to prove that fowls did not need the room and the freedom which for ages they had enjoyed on farms, and that the limit of the possible extension of the city method of keeping fowls in small, bare yards depended in any case upon the business capacity of the poultry keeper.

=Concentration not profitable.= Very few people who have not had experience in growing large numbers of poultry under both good and bad conditions can be made to understand how futile industry and business methods are when many other things which affect results are unfavorable.

Even when the obstacles to the application of intensive methods on a large scale are pointed out to them, most novices imagine that the difficulties are exaggerated for the purpose of discouraging them. They think that the successful poultry keeper wishes to discourage compet.i.tion, and that the person who has failed does not want to see any one else succeed, and so warns others to let such projects alone. Those who have been very successful in their first efforts in a small way seldom lack perfect confidence in their ability to make good on any scale if once they are in a position to devote themselves entirely to this work.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 109. Commercial laying house at New Jersey Experiment Station. (Photograph from the station)]

For some seventy or eighty years, but more especially for the last thirty or forty years, the most conspicuous phase of the poultry industry in America has been the widespread and continuous movement to develop large plants of this character. There has been no time, for a quarter of a century, when poultry plants of this kind, which to the uninitiated appeared to be highly profitable, have not been numerous.

The owners of many of these plants have claimed that they were making very large profits, and their claims have led others to engage in the business, following in every detail the methods in use on some large plant which they suppose is very successful. So, while well-informed poultry keepers know that these methods are not practical on a large scale, except in a few limited lines of production, there is in the business a constant succession of newcomers who try to operate egg farms and breeding farms and combinations of various lines by methods that are not suited to their purpose.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 110. Interior of a compartment in commercial poultry house, United States Government farm, Beltsville, Maryland. (Photograph from Bureau of Animal Industry)]

=Common type of intensive poultry farm.= The ordinary special poultry farm is a run-down farm upon which have been erected the buildings necessary for the accommodation of from four or five hundred to two or three thousand fowls kept in comparatively small yards. The buildings are nearly always neat and substantial, the fences strong and durable.

The arrangement of the plant is orderly, and, when well stocked with fowls and kept clean, it presents a most attractive appearance. The houses and yards for adult stock, the incubator cellar and the brooder houses, the barns and sheds, and the dwelling of the owner or manager occupy but a very small part of the farm--usually from one to three acres. The young chickens are grown year after year on the nearest land not occupied by the permanent buildings and yards. In most cases the land is so heavily stocked with them that they secure almost nothing by foraging.

The routine of work on such a farm is very exacting. The fowls can do so little for themselves and require so much extra care that the poultry keeper knows from the start that he cannot make his business pay unless he gets a very high production. So all his efforts are devoted to this end. He uses labor-saving appliances, carefully systematizes his work, and by great effort often succeeds in making a fair profit for a few years. It is at this stage of his progress that the poultry keeper of this cla.s.s does the boasting which misleads others. Then things begin to go wrong with his stock. His eggs do not hatch well, because his chickens, while nominally on free range on a farm, have really been no better off than chickens reared under ordinary conditions in town. His chickens do not thrive, because they are weak and the land is tainted.

He himself is worn out with long hours of work and no holidays, and if he does not realize his mistake and close out the business in time, it is only a question of continuing until his income and credit combined no longer suffice to keep the business going.

This in brief has been the history of all special poultry farms where intensive methods were used, except the duck farms and the several cla.s.ses to be described farther on in this chapter. By no means all succeed to even the extent described, because a great many people who go into the business have so little capital that they have to give up the business before they have been able to make it show a profit. When the owners have capital, plants are sometimes operated for years at a loss, but it is very rare indeed that a poultry farm of this kind (except in the cla.s.ses to be described later) is continued for more than seven or eight years, and few of them last five years. Those who wish to make a poultry business permanent must adopt other methods.

BROILER GROWING

The desire for what is rare and costly is a common trait in human character. In nothing is it more plainly displayed than in the demand for food products out of their natural season. An article which in its season of abundance is a staple article of diet, within the means of all but the very poorest, at its season of scarcity becomes a luxury which only the wealthy can afford.