Rensselaer Union, Volume 9, Number 38, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 June 1877 — Poultry Yard Notes. [ARTICLE]

Poultry Yard Notes.

A daily ration of green food is an actual necessity for laying hens. Vegetables, either raw or cooked, of which they are very fond, supply in a measure the place of green diet. Onions chopped , fine and mixed with their food are very wholesome, and in many cases a preventive of disease. There is no green food so good for growing chicks as onion tops, cut up fine; they should always be fed something of this kind when it is necessary to house them on account of inclement weather. Put away choice eggs with the name of breed and date of laying until some hen wants to set. Select a good clean nest and put in a china tegg, hang a piece of board over the nest to keep the hen in and outsiders out. Put the hen on the neat and shut the door; if she is wild, a few hours will'quiet her, .and by evening the valuable eggs may be substituted for the china one. The eggs should not be more than thirteen days old, and marked with the date of setting, in order to know when to expect the brood to hatch out. Feed setting hens with corn once in twenty-four hours. Close the doors of the hen-house, lift the hens from the nest by their feet, provide them with com, fresh water and a box of sifted ashes or road dsst. Close the nests find leave the hens for twenty minutes, when they will be ready for their nests. During the latter part of the three weeks sprinkle the eggs daily with lukewarm water, while the hens are .feeding. If the hen was set late in the day the chickens should hatch out at evening or in the night; by the next day they should be ready to leave the nest Put a mixture •of kerosene on their heads and under their wings, and move them with their mother to a clean coop. Darken this coop somewhat for a couple of days, so that the hen may keep herself quiet and her chicks warm. Cover the floor of the coop with sifted ashes. It pays, And pays well, to keep poultry if cared for as they should be. The guano alone, if well housed, is worth more than it costs to keep the fowls. No department of the farm is so geaerally neglected as the poultry yard. Pure Lred fowls pay much better than tbe common ones. If farmers would raise more poultfry for their own table, as a change from the monotony of pork, they would have better health.— N. X. Herald.