After due consideration, and hearing many discouraging remarks from inexperienced people, we visited for advice a man that we knew had used incubators and brooders. As he had gone out of the business of chicken raising, he loaned us an incubator of six hundred egg capacity. We filled it with eggs in February at twenty-five cents per dozen, and the result was one chicken that did not live. But, knowing that the owner of the incubator had been successful when operating it and that he had hatched and marketed hundreds of chickens, we tried again with better success, and our present plant is the gradual outgrowth of this small beginning. It would make a volume of considerable size to give the details of our experience as we progressed.

We hear people say, "If it pays on a small scale it ought to pay proportionately well on a large scale," but right here we will be perfectly candid with you and confess our utter inability to cite you to a single large poultry plant, whose balance sheet would show a profit proportionate to the investment.

We understand that discussions arise as to whether it is more profitable to raise chickens by artificial incubation than with hens, also whether they can be hatched and reared by incubators and brooders at all successfully. We will say that the former can be easily demonstrated and the latter we state as a fact. In the first place nothing taxes the vital powers of your hens so much as sitting and you certainly have been annoyed by their invariably declining to sit when you most desired they should, so that you might derive the benefit of the best market for your chickens, and their persistence in sitting when it is least convenient or desirable to you that they should do so. If some desire to sit at an opportune time, the desire is little likely to attack a sufficient number of them at such time as to render their combined hatch an object of any commercial importance. That alone is fatal to the enterprise of early chicken raising. Then you cannot set many hens in one building, even should you have the requisite space and a large number of hens ready and willing to sit at the proper time. Unless very exceptional arrangements existed, the quarrels and fights would rapidly deplete the stock of eggs and the chickens would lead a very precarious existence, because there is no female more jealous of another than a broody hen; it is possible to keep the peace among them only by keeping them apart. This is not possible on a large scale, and so that also bars the raising of chickens in any great number by sitting hens.

Again hens of a good laying stock will not care for their chickens longer than from four to six weeks. At this age the chicks are not fledged, and as you are hatching early in the season to get the big prices paid for broilers, the weather is cold and your chicks get chilled and die of one of the many forms of indigestion, or freeze to death, so this again renders it impossible to raise market chickens by the hens. We could give many other reasons why we think artificial incubation superior.

The question is often asked, will the incubator hatch as many chickens from two hundred eggs as the hens will and will the brooder raise as large a percentage of these chickens? A hen in early spring cannot cover over twelve eggs successfully of these she seldom hatches over eight or ten, she often kills one or two chickens and seldom raises six, taking the average. We think all will agree that this is a fair estimate.

This calculation must be based only on fertile eggs. Any good incubator can be relied upon to hatch from sixty to eighty per cent. of the fertile eggs and a good brooder to raise ninety-five per cent. of all healthy chickens.

Broiler raising is emphatically a business, and when attempted by a novice almost always proves a failure until he has paid for the experience, which is the essential element of success in any business. Learn something of the hatching and rearing of chickens first. Get your experience cheaply, then you are equipped

for embarking in the business on as extensive a scale as your capital and energy will permit, and with the attention any other business of equal value would require, you cannot make a failure of it. Without patience and perseverance, however, you may with infinite case score a disaster. You are sure to do so if you are not in earnest about it, and if you leave for some one else to do what you should do yourself. We must understand fully before we begin that there is no phase of the business that can be neglected. It is light work but full of details. The difficulty in the way and the one thing that has kept many from going into the poultry business is prejudice. It is difficult to divest a man of prejudice and no person can hope to succeed in a business for which he is unprepared and of which he is ashamed. Give every energy to poultry raising in the winter and early spring and fall back on some other business the remainder of the year. We began with the one incubator and obtained our experience by eternal vigilance and could now operate a number of incubators if we could get the eggs. We were advised not to depend on any one to furnish eggs, or we would be sure of disappointment, and not be able to get them when needed. This we find to be the case, but being farmers we are so busy with other duties that the laying hens are neglected and with the exception of one season, we have depended on others to furnish us eggs. When we did interest ourselves in the laying hens and gave them careful attention, we were successful in getting a satisfactory number of eggs from twelve or fifteen hens, but when we attempted a hundred on the same plan, twelve or fifteen in a house, with run attached, the result was scarcely an egg. We kept the Barred Plymouth Rock as the best general purpose fowl, tried to feed systematically, tried having early pullets and oneyear-old hens, but could not get eggs, nor do we know now how to care for hens to make them winter layers, and are now depending on others for eggs. at twenty-eight and thirty cents per dozen, getting a few eggs each week from a number of persons, but not enough to run all of our incubators.

We learned that if we would have early broilers we must make the conditions as near like nature as possible, so built a brooder house fifty feet long by twelve feet wide, heating it by a hot water system, making ten pens, five feet by nine feet, leaving three feet for an alley running the entire length of the building. Two and one-half feet of each pen next to the alley are hovers, containing the hot water pipes. The pipes are ten inches above the chickens. Each pen accommodates fifty chickens. At first we put one hundred chickens in each pen, but found that of the one hundred all but about fifty would die, so learned that it is practicable to have only fifty chickens together in pens the size of ours.

We also find that "cleanliness is next to godliness," and in poultry culture is the first consideration. Incubator chickens start with no lice and if kept clean and separated from the older stock, which may be so infected, will have none. The next in importance is temperature. If a chick once becomes too hot it never recovers from the shock and many of the bowel diseases arising from overheating are falsely attributed to improper feeding. Do not let the temperature of the brooder get too low at night; when the chickens get chilled they will crowd together and the weaker ones will get tramped to death. About ninety degrees is the proper temperature for a brooder. It should not be allowed to get above one hundred degrees nor below seventy degrees. The brooder should have all top heat, as bottom heat will cause leg weakness. A lack of bone making food will also cause leg weakness. We find green bone, ground fine in a bone mill and fed regularly, the best bone making food. Plenty of grit is necessary all the time. The chickens must be kept dry and have a variety of food. We could give various menus for feeding, some being more beneficial but too expensive to be profitable. We feed altogether in long, narrow troughs, mostly steamed food, moist but never sloppy. We use the Peerless steam cooker.

The morning feed at present is mashed potatoes mixed with bran and cut clover hay, which is given to the chickens just at daylight. At the same time they are given lukewarm water. About ten o'clock they have a feed of steamed cracked corn, at one o'clock, chopped turnips mixed with ground bone, and in the evening always dry cracked wheat or screenings.

In regard to hatching, we find following the rules accompaning the incubator, to be all that is necessary for success.

Our experience is that the best food for the first two or three days is wheat bread thoroughly dried, then rolled and dampened with warm sweet milk.

I have confined my remarks entirely to chickens, as we have had more experience with them than any other fowl. We now have over one thousand chickens and are running three incubators and two brooder houses. We attempted duck raising one spring with fair success. Had them weighing three pounds when twelve weeks old and sold them for eighteen cents per pound. The following spring we raised three hundred and the price dropped the same season to eight cents per pound; at those prices we could see no profit and abandoned the duck business.

The most discouraging feature of the broiler business is "Cold storage." Before the invention of ice machines broilers would sell for six and eight dollars per dozen. There are now in "cold storage" thousands of broilers ready for the market whenever there is a demand.

Finally I will say to poultry fanciers, that to thoroughly read and then follow the advice given in bulletin No. 41 on "Fowls, Care and Feeding," issued by the United States Department of Agriculture, will insure success.

FEEDING POULTRY FOR PROFIT.

By MRS. L. B. ADAIR, Albany, O.

[Read at the Farmers' Institute held at Albany, Athens County, December 30 and 31, 1898.]

My subject, as announced on the program, is "Feeding Poultry for Profit,": but as this covers too large a field for one paper, I shall confine myself to one branch of the subject, "Feeding for Eggs." The subject as announced embraces all there is in the poultry business, unless perhaps some raise fowls for fun. That is not my method, neither are my hens like those of a woman of which I once heard. A neighbor remarked to her:

"What beautiful hens you have."

"Yes," she replied, "they are all imported fowls."

"Indeed! I suppose they lay every day?"

"They could do so if they saw proper, but our circumstances are such that my hens are not required to lay eggs every day."

I feed my hens for all there is in it and while they do not lay every day I think I am amply repaid for all care, feed and attention given them. In the first place I shall give a brief description of our poultry house, which, I think for common farm use where poultry is not a specialty, answers the purpose very well. It is sixteen by twenty feet, built on a side hill, southern exposure. The north side, built in the bank, is protected by earth to the eaves; the front, facing the south, is lighted by two large windows protected by wire netting and provided with sliding sashes that can be opened or closed at discretion. The perches are all on a level, about two feet above a raised platform, thus giving the fowls the

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benefit of all the ground space for exercise. This is kept well covered with litter such as chaff, fine straw or leaves. In winter when it is necessary to keep the fowls confined all grain fed to them is scattered among this litter, thus giving them ample opportunity for the exercise so necessary to the laying hen.

Their morning meal consists of the paring of potatoes and other vegetables of the previous day boiled until soft and thickened with a chop feed consisting of equal parts of corn, oats and wheat bran. The time to give this feed is immediately after they leave the roosts, and I would like to impress upon the minds of would-be egg producers that a great deal depends also on the manner in which it is fed. For instance if you take a pail of this feed to your hens some morning when the temperature is below zero and dump it into the feed trough cold, by the time you are comfortably settled before the fire it is a frozen mass at which the hens may peck in vain. If they do succeed in chipping off enough to satisfy hunger, it takes all the animal heat contained in the body to thaw the frozen food, so there is none left for egg production.

At nine or ten o'clock my fowls are given a small ration of wheat or oats. At noon, when confined, their meal consists of timothy chaff, or clover leaves and heads, from the barn floor, steamed or scalded and mixed with a small portion of corn meal or chop feed. Before going to roost they are given all the whole This in cold weather should be made warm before feeding. corn they will eat. The scraps from the dining table make a valuable addition to the daily ration if properly fed; separate the bones from other scraps and pound them fine so that the meat and the bone also become available as food. It is to carelessness in small details that the failure of many to secure eggs in winter is due.

A friend of mine who is an enthusiast in the poultry business but not exactly "I would give almost successful in securing winter eggs, recently remarked to me: anything if some one would tell me how to make my hens lay. I.have done everything you told me and yet I get no eggs." I was at the time preparing some bones from the dining table to be pounded for my hens. After I had explained my method of procedure, she exclaimed, “Oh, I don't do that; it is too much trouble. I just throw them out," as if the hens could devour them like the worthless canine that consumes enough each day to keep a dozen hens in good laying. condition.

Fresh drinking water at all times is absolutely indispensable to the laying hen, and in cold weather it should be slightly warmed. I keep a large, shallow box in the poultry house filled with road dust, in which, even on extremely cold days. Biddy relishes a bath. A liberal supply of crushed oyster shell and other grit is indispensable. The fowls should have free range when the weather will permit.

Experience has taught me that as much depends upon how you feed as what you feed. Regularity is the main point. Never underfeed nor overfeed. You cannot throw out enough in the morning to last all day and then go visiting and allow your fowls to shift for themselves and expect any great degree of success. The hens should have meat scraps once or twice a week. After butchering I save the cracklings of lard and mix with morning meal occasionally. The meat rinds are placed in the stove until brown and tender then crushed and mixed with their feed in small quantities.

Methinks I hear some economical housewife exclaim: "Why, I use them to make soap!" Very well, they can make soap who wish. I prefer to feed the soap grease to the hens and buy soap with eggs. Occasionally a rabbit or some other animal trapped by the boy is hung up in the poultry house, and soon there is nothing left but the skeleton.

Every poultry raiser has his or her choice as to the breed to be kept. My best showing was from Plymouth Rocks. From a flock of fifty hens during the months of December and January, two of the poorest months in the year, I

marketed eighty-eight dozens of eggs. Since that time I have succeeded nearly as well with Wyandottes.

In conclusion I will say eggs are always in demand, and are always cash. They are ready for market as soon as laid; nothing the farm produces sells better. They require no cultivation, pruning, churning or harvesting. They are at once in a saleable condition; with plenty of eggs on the farm there is an abundance of good things in the kitchen and money in the family purse; when everything is dull in winter the egg basket has wonderfully helped out many a poor farmer. The crop may be poor, the family cow dry with a long wait for the next growing season, but the hen comes up smiling and is ready to contribute the wherewithal to get a pound of tea or a sack of flour. If treated well she responds as readily when the snow is on the ground as when the fields are green; she is a friend to the rich and poor alike.

It is said of General Grant that he had so little knowledge of music that he only knew two tunes. "One was Yankee Doodle and the other wasn't." There are only two ways of caring for poultry, one is the right way and the other is not.

CLIPPING HORSES.

By HOSEA J. MAY, New Springfield, O.

[Read at the Farmers' Institute held at North Lima, Mahoning County, December 7 and 8, 1898.]

Is it inhuman and unnatural to clip a horse? Some enthusiastic lovers of the horse will answer at once "yes" while others will as unhesitatingly answer "no." It is not, however, a question to be decided on any vague or indefinite feelings in the matter.

With each recurring season comes up this question of "clipping horses" and those who favor and those who oppose the practice seem equally sure that they are correct. There may be many arguments and reasons given for clipping, and again some against, but which weighs heavier if placed in the balance depends upon circumstances, for circumstances alter cases. We notice several facts, however, which favor the theory or practice of clipping; first, that it is becoming more used among the increasing number of driving horses in the city, and especially those with some speed, which are clipped each succeeding year.

To the city driving horse, which in the winter season is speeded over the avenues at a rapid rate and during extremely cold weather, clipping has proved a benefit. The winter coat becomes wet with sweat, and the long hair covered with frost and icicles. If left exposed in this condition a case of pneumonia is likely to result, and, if returned to the stable, it is next to impossible to rub the horse dry, and unless he is dry he must suffer the greatest discomfort and be made easily liable to a chill and the result an attack of some disease. Such horses certainly can not enjoy much refreshing rest before being called on to resume their daily toil, and hence for them clipping is to be most strongly urged as humane and judicious treatment.

A horse with a heavy coat of hair, wet, put into the stable at night has been known to come out the next morning with the ends of the hair dry, while next to the skin it remains wet and cold. So it is found that the practice of clipping saves the horse from becoming so quickly chilled, as he does not sweat so freely and when returned to the stable can be quickly rubbed dry and be made comfortable. In the case of long-coated horses, which are frequently of