It is strange that few people except the real poultry-farmers realise that July is one of the most important months in the year. The desire to have eggs in zero weather invariably compels good attention to the hens during the winter. Baby chicks arouse interest in the spring, but as the weather gets warmer, eggs are plentiful, and the pretty, fluffy babies developed into long, lanky creatures, who seem nothing but a nuisance specially ordained to destroy the garden, so the poor things are shut up in small quarters and woefully neglected. During the fall and winter I am repeatedly asked how to make pullets and hens lay, but I can rarely suggest a remedy, because nine times out of ten it is the result of blunders made during the preceding summer.

I don’t believe in sacrificing the garden to the chickens, but I do think they should be properly controlled. A roll of two-inch-mesh wire netting five feet high costs only about four dollars. At the price of eggs nowadays a few dozen will pay for it. Posts can be cut in the wood-lot on most farms, so a yard for a good-sized flock can easily be made for less than five dollars. The best plan is to run a division fence down the centre, so the birds can be confined in one half alternately, for by such means a supply of green food can be kept growing until frost. The ground should be ploughed, and seeded to rye or oats, before the wire is put up. If poultry is to be profitable, the old and young stock must be kept apart, because it is impossible to feed correctly when they are all together. Young birds need plenty of nutritious food to push them along quickly, and laying hens must be put on special rations to bring about early molting, which is the foundation of a good winter supply of eggs.

About July 5th commence to cut down the feed gradually, until at the end of two weeks forty hens are having only a pint of oats and a pint of wheat mixed, night and morning. Scatter it amongst cut straw or some litter, so they will have to scratch for every grain. The first of August commence to increase the rations, and keep it up for a week, so that by the fifteenth they are getting two quarts of mash in the morning, a quart of meat scraps and a pint of cracked corn at noon and wheat and oats or barley at night. Give them just about all they will eat up clean in fifteen minutes. The morning mash should be composed of two parts ground feed (corn and oats), one part white middlings and one part oil-meal, mixed with scalding milk or water. The semi-starvation followed by the heavy feed forces the moulting season and allows plenty of time to feather out and get into condition before October, when their rations should be made up of the essentials for egg-production, which are clover hay, bran, wheat, corn and animal food.

You see, it takes about three months for hens to get rid of their old feathers and put on a new coat, and if the process is not forced in some way, they will not commence before August, which would make it October before they finished. Of course that would be time enough if it happened to be a warm, late fall, but if cold winter weather sets in, as it often does in November, hens would not lay before spring, as moulting leaves them in a more or less debilitated condition.

Lots of people make the mistake of selling off hens as soon as they cease laying at this season, which means that they are usually parting with the birds that would make the real winter layers. Hens that lay through the summer, and do not cease until the fall, will be idle and unprofitable in the winter. It is the general disregard of the moulting period which causes so many failures in the winter supply of eggs. The rule should be to sell off all the hens that have been laying steadily through the summer and commenced to shed feathers in September. Growing feathers is a trying ordeal, and the consequence is that when the hen begins to moult she ceases to lay, for she cannot produce eggs and feathers at the same time.

Feathers are composed largely of nitrogen and mineral matter. That is why the food at moulting time has to be so very nutritious. To feed nothing but corn at such a time is simply waste, as the hen cannot produce new feathers from such a diet. If she is on free range she would have a better chance of gathering the necessary material, but even then, if the feathering process is delayed too long, the hen becomes exhausted, and is susceptible to cold and all sorts of diseases. This is the real reason why roup and swelled head are so prevalent in the fall.

Young birds hatched out in April or thereabouts usually commence to lay in November, because they have not been subject to the drain upon the constitution caused by moulting. But chickens that have been hatched in February or early March are very liable to moult late in the fall, just when they should be commencing to lay. For this reason it is as well to market all the first-hatched chickens, and hold over those hatched late in March or through April, to increase the laying flock.

Cull all young stock down closely. Don’t keep a lot of young cockerels to eat up the profits during the winter. Even pullets which are at all backward should be marketed, for they won’t develop after cold weather sets in, and it does not pay to keep them through for summer layers. Most of the failures made in the poultry business are due to people not having the courage to clean out non-productive birds. Just calculate how many quarts of feed ten growing birds will eat in seven months, and I think you will be convinced that it is unfair to expect the flock to support them and still show a profit. The trouble is that people don’t realise that young stock stand still as soon as cold weather starts, remaining almost stationary until spring. Another evil of keeping undeveloped stock is that they occupy house-room and crowd the older birds.

Now is the time to wage war on vermin, while the bright days last; turn the hens out and have a good housecleaning. Use plenty of hot limewash to which kerosene and crude carbolic acid have been added. If you have two houses, crowd all the birds into one for a few days, and when the empty house has been thoroughly cleaned, commence to catch the birds at night, and powder thoroughly. Use Dalmatian or the home made powder in an ordinary tin flour-dredger, and after shaking a good supply into the feathers, use your hands to rub it well into the fluffy parts near the skin. It is well to repeat the dose about three days after. In thus doing house and birds at the same time, you may be reasonably sure of having exterminated the pests for a few months, at least. Remember to rake up all the falling leaves, to be used for scratching material. A bagful scattered on the floor of the chicken-house once or twice a week will increase the egg-yield and keep the birds healthy during enforced confinement.

Before I forget it, let me remind you not to feed new corn to the fowls. Every year, about this season, I get quantities of letters telling of good, fat hens, the picture of health, which have been found dead. Acute indigestion, brought on by eating unseasoned corn, is the cause. So be careful. If your last year’s supply has run out, it is better to buy a few bags than lose hens on whom you depend for winter eggs. Store all the cabbage or other green vegetables you can before it is too late. Look the house over and stop up all cracks and crevices. A draft from a small hole may give one bird a cold which may develop into roup and infect the whole flock, though an open-front house with only muslin screens may be healthy.

About open-front houses, I don’t believe in them for laying stock. If I were going to carry a lot of young birds or hens which will not lay until April, I might adopt the open-front house as a matter of economy, but not otherwise. I can’t see what is gained by them—that is, in cold latitudes. In the South they are probably all right. We all know that the great percentage of food supplied during cold weather goes to keep up bodily warmth, and that if we expect eggs in zero weather we must supply the hens with sufficient provisions to nourish the body, generate heat and allow a surplus to be converted into eggs. By providing tight, warm sleeping-quarters, we save some of the food which would be used for warmth in a cold house. Plenty of fresh air I do believe in, but everything likes to be warm during the still, dark hours.

I have often seen the argument used that wild birds, which have no houses at all, are always healthy. But how often do we hear about numbers of birds being found dead after a severe storm. What is more, wild birds only lay during the spring of the year. When man upsets Nature’s laws to supply human wants, he should stop quoting Nature’s ways. Our present-day hen, which lays, or is expected to lay, one hundred and eighty to two hundred eggs a year, is a very different creature from the wild hen, and she must be provided with better food, housing and care.

As of course you know, different food materials contain different qualities. Some give us the fat necessary for warmth; others, nitrogenous qualities, which form flesh; still others, minerals, such as lime, soda, etc., etc., needed for bone and muscle. All kinds of animals, birds, and even human beings, require some quantity of these ingredients, otherwise one part of the body or nervous system will be starved, while another will be overfed. With the hen it is of great importance that she have all these different ingredients well blended in her food, as she requires them not only to sustain her in health, but also for the formation of eggs.

We will start with the foods that give the greatest quantity of lime, because it is needed for shell, and some fractional part in the white and yolk, most essential, for it is turned during incubation into bone, the very foundation of the chicken. Clover hay, linseed-meal and wheat bran contain about six pounds of lime in every hundred, and turnip-tops, carrots and all grasses have a goodly percentage. Flesh comes from nitrogenous or albumenal foods, first of which are beef, linseed-meal, middlings, bran, clover hay, wheat and skimmed milk. Fat and heat we get from carbonaceous provenders, among which corn and buckwheat lead, closely followed by oats, wheat, rye, clover hay, linseed-meal and unskimmed milk.

Mineral matter—lime, soda, potash, magnesia and sulphur—is principally formed by the action of digestion reducing the matter containing these ingredients to ash. The usual troubles assailing poultry on most farms come from the feeding of only one of these elements. Poor Biddy has all flesh and no warmth, or all fat and no flesh.

Kill a bird that has been fed on corn only, and it will be heavy with layers of internal fat, but showing a very poor depth of breast-meat. Balancing rations, trying to equalise flesh, fat (warmth) and mineral, is not a very hard proposition when the values of even a few grains and plants are realised.

Having read so far, you will now realise that clover hay, linseed-meal, bran, wheat, oats, beef scraps and unskimmed milk contain practically all the equivalents of summer foods; the addition, therefore, of corn, buckwheat or rye in cold weather is safe and simple if given only as warmth-makers. Never allow the proportion to exceed what is needed for that purpose, or fat will be made and stored, neutralising all your care. In other words, the hen fed on corn only, in order to accumulate the ten parts of flesh and twenty parts of fat needed for the egg, will be compelled to acquire fifty parts more fat than she requires.

Green bone and water now alone remain for consideration. The former is beyond doubt the best of egg foods, qualifying as it does in nearly all the needed elements. Many farmers scoff at the idea of having to pay for a mill to cut up bone for chickens, yet the same men will not grudge a hay-cutter for the horse and cow. Green bone means fresh bone from the butcher, which can be bought for about two cents a pound. The mill to grind it ranges from eight to fifteen dollars.

Green bone contains the natural meat, juices, blood, gristle, oil and mineral matter in soluble condition, which renders it easy of digestion, especially for birds—almost all the components for eggs (white, yolk and shell), in the most concentrated form possible. So, if eggs are to become profitable, the bone-mill must be kept going. When it is impossible to obtain the green or fresh bone, the ground bone sold especially for poultry can be used, though it is not half so satisfactory, because the drying process it has to submit to before grinding leaves little but the phosphate of lime and earthy matter, which clover and bran furnish in better form. At least half the egg is composed of water, surely a sufficient reason for impressing the importance of a generous supply accessible at all times, in clean dishes, of a proper temperature, cool in summer and the chill off in winter.