🐣Hen Nursery🐥
🐔Keeping Chickens🐓
POULTRY.
Your fowl-house should be well ventilated, and supplied with abundant roosting-poles. The nests should be supplied with clean straw, separated and situated out of the way of the roosts.
Your fowl-house should be swept clean once a week at least, and sprinkled with sand, charcoal, and lime. It should be fumigated at least once in three weeks with sulphur and tobacco to destroy the vermin. Your water-troughs should be emptied daily, and filled with fresh water. Eggs from insects, which abound in foul water, often are taken up into the mouth and nostrils of chickens, pass into the windpipes and produce worms, which cause the gapes, and so kill the chickens.
Young turkeys, geese, ducks, and chickens require animal food,--without it they are apt to be weak and sickly. Mix a hard-boiled egg and a little red pepper in the dough with which you feed them. Feed them in the morning and at noon; never near night, as chickens suffer sometimes with dyspepsia from want of exercise after eating; the dough becomes sour on the stomach, and causes the craw to swell, which often kills them.
Have a hole cut in your hen-house door just large enough for the hens to enter; but keep the door locked that the eggs may be safe. If you intend to rear chickens, take the eggs out of the nests every day,--all but the nest-egg,--and keep them in a warm place in winter, and a cool place in summer. Turn them daily, and be careful not to shake them.
When a hen sits on a nest steadily for twenty-four hours, pecks at you, and ruffles up her feathers when you touch her, then you may safely put the eggs under her for sitting; but if she leaves the nest on your approach, do not trust your eggs under her, as she is not in earnest, and the eggs will be spoiled.
Do not trouble your hen while she is hatching,--wait till she voluntarily leaves her nest with all her brood; then transfer her to a convenient little coop, all to herself, in some quiet, grassy nook, where her chickens can run about enjoying themselves, returning at their pleasure to her maternal care. Keep a plate or pan of clean water near by, both for mother and chickens. In this way you will scarcely lose a chicken.
Turkeys, geese, and ducks may be dealt with in the same way till half-grown.
Such coops should always have bars in front, open enough for the young to go out and in; but there should be a board the full size of the front of the coop to let down at night and in bad weather. This door should not be raised in the morning till the dew is off the grass, nor in rainy weather.
Feed your grown fowls of every kind once a day well. Grain is best and most convenient. Give them in the morning as much as they will eat. This will be amply sufficient. If they are industrious they will find plenty of animal food during the day for themselves in the form of bugs and other insects.
To FATTEN POULTRY.--Have a light coop, without a floor, that your cook can easily move about. Have it sufficiently large to contain eight or ten fowls without crowding them. Feed them twice a day plentifully with warm mush. This, with clean water and fresh gravel every day, will fatten them well in six or eight days.
Before you kill the last pair, put in six or eight more fowls, and proceed as before with them. Move the coop to a clean place every day. Fowls, turkeys, geese, or ducks may be thus dealt with to advantage.
Spring chickens should not be killed till fully as large as partridges, and should be very fat. Broil them nicely, and butter them plentifully, or make of them a rich chicken-pie.
If you ever find it necessary to kill an old tough fowl, give it a spoonful of sharp vinegar half an hour before you kill it. Keep it as long as the weather will allow, and then parboil it before roasting. Another way is to cover the fowl (after killing and cleaning it) with fig leaves for twenty-four hours.
"It is said to be a fixed fact that old women who live in cottages know best how to rear chickens. They are more successful; and this may be traced to the fact that they keep but few fowls, and these are allowed to run in the house, to roll in the ashes, to approach the fire, to pick up crumbs, and are nursed with care and indulgence. By warmth and judicious feeding a hen may be made to lay far more and richer eggs than she otherwise would."
Wheat and Indian corn are the best grains for fowls. Occasionally a little refuse meat of any kind will improve them; also milk in which Indian meal or scraps of wheaten bread are mingled. When drooping, give a little sulphur and red pepper in their food.
Your fowl-house should be well ventilated, and supplied with abundant roosting-poles. The nests should be supplied with clean straw, separated and situated out of the way of the roosts.
Your fowl-house should be swept clean once a week at least, and sprinkled with sand, charcoal, and lime. It should be fumigated at least once in three weeks with sulphur and tobacco to destroy the vermin. Your water-troughs should be emptied daily, and filled with fresh water. Eggs from insects, which abound in foul water, often are taken up into the mouth and nostrils of chickens, pass into the windpipes and produce worms, which cause the gapes, and so kill the chickens.
Young turkeys, geese, ducks, and chickens require animal food,--without it they are apt to be weak and sickly. Mix a hard-boiled egg and a little red pepper in the dough with which you feed them. Feed them in the morning and at noon; never near night, as chickens suffer sometimes with dyspepsia from want of exercise after eating; the dough becomes sour on the stomach, and causes the craw to swell, which often kills them.
Have a hole cut in your hen-house door just large enough for the hens to enter; but keep the door locked that the eggs may be safe. If you intend to rear chickens, take the eggs out of the nests every day,--all but the nest-egg,--and keep them in a warm place in winter, and a cool place in summer. Turn them daily, and be careful not to shake them.
When a hen sits on a nest steadily for twenty-four hours, pecks at you, and ruffles up her feathers when you touch her, then you may safely put the eggs under her for sitting; but if she leaves the nest on your approach, do not trust your eggs under her, as she is not in earnest, and the eggs will be spoiled.
Do not trouble your hen while she is hatching,--wait till she voluntarily leaves her nest with all her brood; then transfer her to a convenient little coop, all to herself, in some quiet, grassy nook, where her chickens can run about enjoying themselves, returning at their pleasure to her maternal care. Keep a plate or pan of clean water near by, both for mother and chickens. In this way you will scarcely lose a chicken.
Turkeys, geese, and ducks may be dealt with in the same way till half-grown.
Such coops should always have bars in front, open enough for the young to go out and in; but there should be a board the full size of the front of the coop to let down at night and in bad weather. This door should not be raised in the morning till the dew is off the grass, nor in rainy weather.
Feed your grown fowls of every kind once a day well. Grain is best and most convenient. Give them in the morning as much as they will eat. This will be amply sufficient. If they are industrious they will find plenty of animal food during the day for themselves in the form of bugs and other insects.
To FATTEN POULTRY.--Have a light coop, without a floor, that your cook can easily move about. Have it sufficiently large to contain eight or ten fowls without crowding them. Feed them twice a day plentifully with warm mush. This, with clean water and fresh gravel every day, will fatten them well in six or eight days.
Before you kill the last pair, put in six or eight more fowls, and proceed as before with them. Move the coop to a clean place every day. Fowls, turkeys, geese, or ducks may be thus dealt with to advantage.
Spring chickens should not be killed till fully as large as partridges, and should be very fat. Broil them nicely, and butter them plentifully, or make of them a rich chicken-pie.
If you ever find it necessary to kill an old tough fowl, give it a spoonful of sharp vinegar half an hour before you kill it. Keep it as long as the weather will allow, and then parboil it before roasting. Another way is to cover the fowl (after killing and cleaning it) with fig leaves for twenty-four hours.
"It is said to be a fixed fact that old women who live in cottages know best how to rear chickens. They are more successful; and this may be traced to the fact that they keep but few fowls, and these are allowed to run in the house, to roll in the ashes, to approach the fire, to pick up crumbs, and are nursed with care and indulgence. By warmth and judicious feeding a hen may be made to lay far more and richer eggs than she otherwise would."
Wheat and Indian corn are the best grains for fowls. Occasionally a little refuse meat of any kind will improve them; also milk in which Indian meal or scraps of wheaten bread are mingled. When drooping, give a little sulphur and red pepper in their food.
Links
Chicken Coop Plans
More Coming Soon
More Coming Soon
