not appear to produce a great many eggs. Very little care or attention was then given to the poultry, and it is not much different in that respect at the present time. You may say, "Oh, that man has got the hen fever," but I tell you there are worse nuisances about farm premises than hens. When for lack of a proper place they roost on the mowing machine they are a nuisauce; but in doing so, they manifest more sense than the man who fails to provide them a proper place. The first requisite is suitable quarters; these should be entirely separate from the other farm buildings, and if the good wife has to feed the hens, don't have it too far from the house. Lay a stone wall eight to 18 inches in height and lay the sills on the top of the wall, filling inside with coarse broken stone or gravel about half way up; over this place some marl or coal ashes, something to make a tight floor that will be smooth and hard; in the summer place loose sand or coal ashes and in the winter throw a covering of chaff over the floor. Lay your sill on top of the wall, then make a coating of boards round the building on the outside and cover with a coating of tarred paper, making good wide laps so that the wind can't get through; cover with strips an inch thick, on the outside, so as to make the building wind-proof, although it will not be frostproof. In the end you will find a good shingle roof about as cheap as any.

Before you put any fowls in the building, whitewash it, and put a handful of salt in each pail of whitewash, so that the whitte wash won't wash off. Take a piece two by six and scoop out the upper surface so that when you put it against the wall you will have a little pocket; this is for a bracket; on the opposite side of the building put another bracket up in the same manner then lay your roost on these two brackets in such a way that the ends of the roost do not touch the sides of the building. These "pockets" should be filled with cotton waste soaked with kerosene oil. Put in the oil about once a week in the summer, perhaps not so often in the winter. That is to keep the insects from the birds. The little gray mites are the great bane of poultry raising. Fowls cannot lay when infested with blood suckers which get on to the birds when they are on the roost at night and then crawl back into the cracks. They cannot get through this kerosene oil. Before the fowls are put into the building, they should be dusted with Persian insect powder; this will kill off any mites or lice that may be on the birds; after four or five days they should be dusted again to kill the little nits. If you do this before you put the fowls in the building, and keep the insects away as described, there will be no trouble from them. About a foot below them put a board to catch the droppings from the fowls; sprinkle on it about half an inch of field plaster-land plaster. This will be better than any commercial fertilizer. Clean your boards once or twice a week and put it away in a dry place until spring. It will be worth six to eight dollars a ton.

Provide a dust bath six or eight inches deep, two feet long and 20 inches wide; field plaster is the best for this purpose; road dust is too wet, oftentimes. When you clean off the droppings and land plaster under the fowls, cover the board with the plaster from the bath, and provide fresh plaster for that. Have a clean bath filled each week. The hen house should be 14 or 16 feet wide, divided into sections 12 feet long, and have not more than 25 fowls in any one flock; the partition can be made of hemlock boards about three feet high and above that some wire netting, which is better and cheaper than boards.

I think the farmer or dairyman will find more money in raising eggs than in raising broilers.

Many farmers have made a success in broiler raising, but there are so many wrecks along the wayside that I would not advise that course. It looks as if there was lots of money in it, but many have failed to find it, and I will talk particularly about eggs. There is as much money to be made in keeping ordinary fowls, you need not get thoroughbreds. The thoroughbreds have been inbred until they have lost vitality and cannot give us much profit. There are several strains that are equally profitable, the Hamburgs, Leghorns and French Hoodans. Then there is the Dominick, Plymouth Rock and Wyandotte and Bantams, the Asiatics and the Brahmas and others.

Almost any American or Mediterranean or Asiatic breed, if well fed and well housed, will give a fair profit in eggs. In selecting your flock get uniformity, and select your flock with the end in view of raising eggs. A man told me that some of his highest scoring birds last season did not average three eggs a day from 12 pullets. We must get an egg every day from our entire flock in order to get a profit. We must be careful in selecting fowls to get those that have the egg laying faculty. There is an individuality about fowls the same as there is about cows. If you get half a dozen Brahmas, and half a dozen Plymouth Rocks, and half a dozen Leghorns, while one family is getting the proper quantity of food, the others would not have enough to keep them alive; and if you feed the Brahmas enough to do their best in egg laying, you are overfeeding the Leghorns so that they cannot lay any eggs. Hence the necessity of having a uniform flock, then you can feed them alike and secure the best results in eggs, for hens cannot lay eggs if they are overfed.

If a pound of eggs should be taken and broken up it would be found that 67 per cent of the entire egg was water. Now, if the hen has got to put 67 per cent of water into her egg, it is obvious she cannot lay very many eggs if her food is too dry. The egg contains 11 2-10 per cent of albumen. If you feed your hens on corn alone, where will they get the albumen to put into the egg? If you give them too much of the albumen food they will get fat. Corn fed exclusively is not good for the hens because there is not enough albumen in it. If you are going to feed grain to the hens, then wheat

would be better than anything else. Oats would do, but the husk of the oats is of such a nature that if the fowls fill their crop pretty full of oats they will swell and the fowl becomes crop-bound. Clover hay is as good and cheap a food as you can give to your fowls; it is a first-class egg food, but it is too bulky and we must have something more concentrated. The best method I have found is to cut it into half-inch lengths; it can be done with a machine made for the purpose, or by a regular fodder cutter. Place a quantity of it in a tight barrel at night and throw over it a quantity of boiling water and let it steep until morning covered with a carpet or blanket to keep the steam in; mix it with 100 pounds of coarse bran; 80 pounds of corn meal, 100 pounds of ground oats, 30 pounds of linseed meal and 10 pounds of charcoal.

A Voice-What's the matter with buckwheat?

Mr. Dawley-That's all right; that's good food for fowls, but its action is a little too stimulating; it is inclined to give the hen a tendency to lay too much; take the whole year through it is better not to feed too much buckwheat.

A Member-Would you use the old or new process of linseed meal?

Mr. Dawley-It does not make much difference; I like the new process. Mix this charcoal and the bran and the linseed meal, take the whole oats and 80 pounds of whole corn and thoroughly mix the charcoal in with it and get it all ground together. I can't tell you how much salt to put in, salt it to taste; make it about as salt as if you were going to eat it yourself. This is the morning feed; at noon feed a little meat and some bones occasionally; run the meat through one of these mills; buy one of those machines and your bone meal bill will soon pay for it. You can commence and give an ounce of this a day and then after a week or 10 days increase it. If you do not give them animal meal at noon, give them a basket of ensilage or some grain stuffs from the cellar, or a basket of clover hay just as it is cut without wetting it up; throw it down for them. If you feed the ensilage, feed it in some manner that they can't get it readily; cover it with dirt. In the evening give them wheat and corn, two-thirds wheat and one-third corn.

If this line of feeding is followed and the fowls are properly housed, and regularly fed, I have no doubt you will get good results speedily. Now we have brought about the conditions of spring; that is all that is necessary to give us good return in eggs-warm quarters and animal or insect food combined with nutritious ration, just what they would get if they got their own rations out of doors. A Member-What about sunflower seeds?

Mr. Dawley-Well, sunflower seeds are good for fowls, but they cost too much to grow, by making too great a drain on the soil; I

do not think they can be grown profitably for poultry food. They are a fine thing for fancy poultry to give the required sheen that you want on the fowl that is intended for exhibition.

A Member-What do you think of the hen food that you see advertised that is sure to make them lay right off and keep them at it?

Mr. Dawley-If I were lecturing on humanity and a man asked me what I thought of a good, big drink of whiskey, I might say that compared favorably with the hen food sold in the market; the effect of the whiskey on the man and of the hen food on the fowl would be the same; its only effect is to stimulate egg production, resulting in a premature cessation of egg laying.

(The speaker then explained a large diagram illustrating the several stages of egg production from the ovaries of the bird to the laying of the egg.)

This (indicating) represents the ovaries, and these are the eggs; now suppose for some reason a hen is scared, by having a dog set on to her or in some other way, she drops a yolk that is almost detached while there is a yolk here (indicating) and the result is she lays an egg with a double yolk; she is apt to lay another just like it, and then she goes out of the egg business.

By systematic feeding the farmers in Groton and Tompkins county received from the product of their hens more than they did from their dairies. They don't have much company there in the neighborhood of the hen house because of the fright that the fowls might receive when a stranger comes near them; take one man, for instance, who has 600 hens, a scare among them and lessened production of eggs would mean quite a large sum.

Eggs should be sent to market in a proper manner. This (holding up a small paste-board box) is the Elliott Company's egg packer; it holds a dozen eggs and is a good thing to use to ship eggs to market. It is a good thing in packing your eggs in boxes for market to select a dozen eggs of as near a color as possible. Some people seem to have a preference for light shelled eggs and others for the dark shelled eggs; all of the non-setting breeds, the Hamburg, French, English and Mediterranean classes, produce light shelled eggs; nearly all the others produce dark shelled eggs.

Mr. Fasset-What is the cure for grub in the foot, or what you call "bumble-foot?"

Mr. Dawley-That is an injury that results from a bruise in the ball of the foot from jumping off the perch. A hard pith will form through the sole of the foot and it will appear so that the end of it will seem to be one side of the sole. Make two little slits like a cross and, by pressure, force out the pith; sometimes there is a little casing or lining in the inside of the wound; take some sharp instrument and dig out this, it is a little yellow coating; an emery or ivory

bodkin is the best thing, because then you will not cut the foot any further than you have cut it with the knife. Fill it with a little carbolated vaseline—that is, ordinary vaseline with a little carbolic acid in it; tie up the foot to keep out the dirt, keep it tied up a few days and it will soon heal.

A Member-What would you recommend as a substitute for clover hay?

Mr. Dawley--That is a little hard; if I could not get clover hay, instead of 80 pounds of corn meal in the ration, I would have 40 pounds of corn meal and 50 pounds of linseed meal and would make up the coarse food of the ration from turnips, cabbage, or something of that kind.

Mr. Whitney-Would you recommend the first or second crop.of clover?

Mr. Dawley-I would rather get the first or second crop before it goes into blossom; I would not mind which crop.

Mr. Pierce-What breed do you consider the best for poultry, and what breed for eggs?

Mr. Dawley-You might ask me what man had the best looking wife. I might tell to my satisfaction, but it would not satisfy all the men.

Mr. Pierce-I asked what you considered the best.

Mr. Dawley-The fowl which will give you the greatest number of eggs before it is two years old, and bring you the best profit as a fowl, I believe is the White Plymouth Rock. I have no desire to boom my own birds but if I thought there was any better breed than that, I would have some before I slept to-night; they lay more eggs and they dress well for the table.

A Member-What is the color of their eggs?

Mr. Dawley-From a light brown to a dark brown. I state that as my opinion of the best strain for profit. On this matter of dressing the fowl for the market, you should be careful in picking out the pin feathers not to break the end, or it will leave some coloring matter that will come out in the flesh and by the time it gets to market it will be a black-and-blue spot.

A Member-How about fertilized or unfertilized eggs, as a matter of profit; that is, keeping, etc?

Mr. Dawley-I think unfertilized eggs will keep longer than fertilized ones.

Mr. Johnson-Will the hens lay as well?

Mr. Dawley-Four experiments have been made; two show that you get more eggs by keeping no roosters, and two showed that the only benefit derived was the lessened expense of keeping the males.