Making Home ProfitableSaint Maur, Kate V. (Kate Vandenhoff)
Science
Making Home Profitable
Saint Maur, Kate V. (Kate Vandenhoff)
Agriculture; Country life
The coops having no flooring, and the whole construction being light,
they are easily moved to fresh ground each week, and so kept clean with
little trouble, an important item when there is a large quantity being
used. Having a large orchard, we placed the coops in rows thirty feet
apart, as two sides of the orchard adjoin woodland, through which a
never-failing spring-stream runs, so the birds have a splendid range.
Twenty birds are placed in each coop. The first week a portable
yard, five feet long, is placed in front of each coop so that the
young chicks cannot wander off and get lost, as they surely would
in strange quarters. During that time a self-feeding hopper and a
drinking-fountain are placed inside of the coop. When the yard is
removed, the individual vessels are dispensed with, large drinking-tubs
and feed-hoppers being stationed midway between every four coops, to
reduce time and labour in caring for the birds.
[Illustration: THE POULTRY YARD]
The large hoppers are nothing more than boxes, five feet long, two feet
wide and six inches deep, over which is placed an A-shaped cover, made
of slats, one inch apart, to prevent the birds getting into the box
and scratching the grain onto the ground, where it will be wasted. For
water, five-gallon kegs are used, with an automatic escape, which keeps
a small pan continually full. Both feed and water are placed under a
rough shelter, to protect them from sun and rain. Using such large
receptacles, it is only necessary to fill them every other day.
Feed consists of a dry mash, composed of ten pounds of wheat bran,
ten pounds of ground oats, one pound of white middlings, one pound of
old-process oil-meal and ten pounds of beef scraps, all well mixed. In
addition to that, they receive at night a feed of wheat and cracked
corn--two parts of the former to one of the latter. About half a pint
is scattered in front of each coop, at about four P. M.
Grit is supplied in large quantities. Being near a stone-crusher,
we buy the screenings by the cart-load and dump it in heaps on the
outskirts of the orchard, where it does not show, but is quite
accessible to the chicks.
On these rations, without any variation, the pullets are kept until
September, when they are transferred to their winter quarters--houses
twelve feet wide, ten feet high in front, sloping to eight feet at
the back. Each house is divided by wire netting into twelve-foot
compartments, in each of which forty birds are kept.
Winter feeding commences as soon as the birds are settled in their
houses, and consists of the same mash as when on range, except that
ten pounds of corn-meal is added, and, instead of the ten pounds of
commercial beef scraps, sixteen pounds of freshly cracked green bone is
used, and, in place of being before them all the time, it is fed once a
day, just what they will eat up clean in fifteen minutes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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