Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 39, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 June 1875 — Curing Hens of the Propensity to Sit. [ARTICLE]

Curing Hens of the Propensity to Sit.

It is quite as natural for a hen to sit as it is to eat or to lay eggs. Hence, after a hen has produced an indefinite number of eggs, sometimes a few and sometimes many, she will cease to lay and her system will assume a proper preparation to pass the period of Incubation without impairing her health. When a hen is in a “ laying habit” it would be ruinous to her health to remain inactive on the nest for twenty-one successive days—the period of incubation. Some hens are so slightly inclined to ..incubate that the propensity may be cured simply by driving them a few times from the nest, while others, even when they have produced only half a sitting of eggs, will stick to their nests with pugnacious desperation. If it is not desirable that a hen be permitted to incubate, she must be treated philosophically and understandingly. When the desire to incubate comes on the laying habit disappears. My own practice is to put such hens as are inclined to incubate in a large cage in the hennery, where they can see other fowls outside of their prison, and give them a generous supply of soft food and water. After they have been released one or two days they will commence immediately to “ feed up” and to bring the system again to an egg-produc-ing habit. A great many sensible people who do not understand the correct way to manage hens at this natural period take them into a dark apartment and shut them up in a barrel or turn a corn basket over them. Others order a hen to be ducked nine times in water to cure the propensity to sit. Others still hold a hen’s head in a pail of water while one is counting fifty. Others will tie a piece of red flannel to a hen. Numerous other stupid remedies are adopted, all of which are unphilosophical and ineffectual. But when secured in a cage, as, suggested, if fed generously with soft food, a hen will soon commence laying another sitting of eggs. When I have a valuable hen or turkey whose eggs are desired for rearing stock of that particular bird she is kept laying. As soon as she has produced a brood of eggs and desires to sit she is put in a cage for sfday or two and her eggs are placed beneath another fowl. By this system of management a turkey will often lay three or four sittings of eggs in one season.— Agricola , in N. T. Herald.

about twenty miles from Berlin is situated the village of Sperenberg, noted for the deepest well that has ever been sunk. Owing to the presence of gypsum in the locality, which is at a moderate distance from the capital, it occurred to the Government authorities of the mines to obtain a supply of rock salt. With this end in view the sinking of a shaft or well sixteen feet in diameter was commenced some five years ago, and at a depth of 280 feet the salt was reached. The boring was continued to the further depth of 960 feet, the diameter of the bore being reduced to about thirteen inches. The operations were subsequently prosecuted by the aid of steam until a depth of 4,104 feet was attained. At this point the boring was discontinued, the borer being still in the salt deposits, which thus fexhibit the enormous thickness of 2,907 feet. —-There are eight Bessemer steel works in operation in this, country.