Our Domestic Birds: Elementary Lessons in Aviculture

by John H. Robinson

Small Flocks on Ordinary Farms

Numbers in flocks. The ordinary farm flock consists of from fifty to one hundred adult fowls and, during the growing season, from one hundred to two hundred chickens. The old stock is usually kept in one or more small houses located among the other outbuildings, and all run together during the day. If the farmer wants to keep the fowls out of the dooryard and the kitchen garden, he does not make yards for the fowls, but incloses the dooryard and garden. Outside of these the birds go where they please. The coops for the young chickens are often kept in the dooryard or the garden until the chickens are weaned, but after that the young birds are nearly always turned out to take their chances with the old ones.

Fig. 81. A small farm stock of fowls, ducks, and turkeys

Under such conditions a farm flock is not often very productive, yet, as the birds secure a large part of their food by foraging, the flock may be more profitable than a more productive flock for which all food is bought and upon which a great deal of labor is expended. While this way of keeping fowls on farms is not in itself commendable, it is not to be altogether condemned, because circumstances often compel the farmer to treat his fowls as a sort of volunteer or self-producing crop. The conditions on a farm admit of this, and as a matter of fact the greater part of our enormous total production of eggs and poultry comes from the half-neglected flocks on the ordinary farms. Hence the conditions are tolerable where they are necessary, but whenever it is possible to give farm fowls enough attention to obviate the faults of common practice, the product and the profits can be greatly increased with very little increase in the cost of production. In this section we consider the best methods of securing this result when all the old stock is to be kept as one flock. Old stock and young ought always to be separated unless the old birds constitute an insignificant portion of the flock.

Fig. 82. Good poultry house on Texas farm. (Photograph from Bureau of Animal Industry, United States Department of Agriculture)

Single houses for farm flocks. It is as true on a farm as elsewhere that the greatest yields of eggs and the best growth in young birds are secured when the flock is divided into small groups. But a farm flock of the class under consideration, while it makes its headquarters in such buildings as may be provided, will forage a considerable distance in every direction, going among growing crops from which the larger farm animals must be excluded, and also following the larger animals in their stables, yards, and pastures and picking up food left by them. As fowls also eat many weeds and seeds of weeds, and all kinds of destructive insects, the advantages of letting them run at large more than make up for lower production. Also the production is normal and can be easily maintained from year to year in the same line of stock, while high production secured by extra care is forced and can be maintained in the same line of stock for only a few generations. A flock of one hundred fowls or less, that run together, may all be kept in one house just as well as in several, if the size of the house and the equipment are in proportion to the size of the flock.

Fig. 83. Rude poultry house on a Kansas farm. (Photograph from Bureau of Animal Industry, United States Department of Agriculture)

If the snow lies long on the ground, so that the fowls are confined to the house much of the time in winter, the allowance of floor space should be about 5 sq. ft. per bird. Where the snow rarely lies more than a day or two at a time, less space may be given, because the birds will not occupy the house much of the time during the day. Under such conditions the allowance of floor space may be as low as 3 sq. ft. per bird. Those who go to this limit, however, should consider that, in the unusual case of a snowstorm keeping the hens confined to the house for more than a very few days, overcrowding may cause losses that more than offset what was gained by using the highest capacity of the house.

Usually a flock of fifty hens needs a house with a floor surface of about 250 sq. ft. This is obtained in a house 16 ft. square or in a house 12 ft. × 24 ft. A house 20 ft. square is about right for seventy-five or eighty hens, and is not badly overcrowded if one hundred medium-sized birds are put into it. If an oblong building is preferred, a house 12 ft. wide by 42 ft. long gives one hundred birds 5 sq. ft. of floor space per bird. Houses of such size should be from 4 ft. to 7 ft. high at the sides, and from 7 ft. to 10 ft. high at the highest point of the roof, according to the style of construction.

Fig. 84. Good poultry house on a Kansas farm. (Photograph from Bureau of Animal Industry, United States Department of Agriculture)

Feeding. In the feeding of a farm flock the first thing to consider is what the birds can pick up by foraging. The poultry keeper on a farm, even more than the poultry keeper elsewhere, should make it a rule to do nothing for poultry that they can do for themselves. Fowls can do more for themselves at some seasons than at others, because natural food is more abundant. As fowls do not usually go very far from their house, the larger the flock the less food each bird will secure. On some farms quite a large flock of fowls can get all the food they need about the barns and stockyards and in orchards and fields near the homestead.

Fig. 85. Poultry house at Mississippi Agricultural College.[10] (Photograph from the college)

[10] In this house the part of the rear wall above the roost platform is made to open wide, thus affording perfect ventilation in summer.

When the conditions are such that it may reasonably be supposed that the fowls can get all the food they require without going farther than fowls usually wander, the best way to determine whether this supposition is correct is to give them no food until evening, then throw out a little grain and see how much they will eat. If it appears that they need to be fed a considerable quantity, it is better to give a light feed in the morning and another in the evening than to give a heavy feed once a day, because if they learn to expect a full feed at a regular time, they will not forage so well. Fowls that have an opportunity to secure considerable food by foraging should never be fed so much in the morning that they will sit around for hours. When hens on a farm need only one or two light feeds a day, whatever grain is most convenient may be given them. Where they get so much exercise and a good variety of other foods, whole corn is as good as anything. A good way to feed it is to break the ears into short pieces and let the birds pick the grain from the cob.

In winter the feeding of the farm flock should have more attention, especially if little food can be secured around the stables and stockyards. It is a good plan to give, once a day, a warm mash made of 1 part (by measure) of corn meal and 2 parts of bran, and to give as much grain at one other feeding as the hens will eat. Some farmers use sheaf oats for litter in the floors of their poultry houses, throwing in a sheaf or two as often as is necessary to keep a good depth of litter on the floor, and then give as much corn in addition as the hens will eat readily.

Fig. 86. Open-front house with hood. (Photograph from Department of Agriculture, Victoria, British Columbia)

If it is not convenient to make a mash, what grain the fowls will eat quickly from a trough may be prepared for a warm breakfast for them by pouring boiling water on it in the evening and letting it soak overnight. Any of the small grains and cracked corn may be fed in this way; whole corn needs longer soaking. In hard, freezing weather no more mash or soaked grain should be given than the fowls will eat before it can freeze. A favorite old-time practice still used on many farms is to heat shelled corn in the oven and feed it while warm.

The best vegetable foods for fowls in winter are cabbages and mangel-wurzels. The cabbages can be hung up by the roots and the fowls will eat all but the stump. The most convenient way to feed the beets is to split them and impale the pieces on spikes in the wall at a convenient distance from the floor. Sound, sweet turnips are also good, but bitter turnips and those that have begun to spoil are likely to give an unpleasant flavor to the eggs. A little freezing does not seem to affect the value of these vegetables for poultry food, and the birds will usually eat them when frozen. The quantity fed at one time, however, should not be so large that it may freeze and thaw several times before it is all eaten.

Fig. 87. Movable poultry house on United States Government farm, Beltsville, Maryland. (Photograph from Bureau of Animal Industry)

When hogs and cattle are killed on a farm, the blood and other offal, and the small trimmings when the carcasses are cut up, should be saved and fed to the fowls regularly in moderate quantities, but care should be taken not to leave fat trimmings where the fowls can help themselves, for if fowls have been short of animal food, they eat meat very greedily and are often made sick by it. Blood and lean meat are not very injurious, but too much fat meat has very bad effects.

Fig. 88. The upper shutter is closed only at night in extreme cold weather

Fig. 89. Lower part of front open for hot weather

ANOTHER STYLE OF MOVABLE HOUSE AT THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT FARM, BELTSVILLE, MARYLAND. (Photograph from Bureau of Animal Industry)

It is not necessary to give the fowls water when there is snow on the ground. Delicate fowls that are accustomed to close confinement may not be able to stand running out on the snow, but if they have a comfortable house, with a good supply of litter on the floor, and are free to go and come at will, rugged birds that are out in all kinds of weather are not in the least hurt by going out on snow and ice and wet ground in cold weather, and will usually take snow in preference to water when they can get it. When the ground is bare and frozen, water or finely chipped ice should be supplied. In extreme cold weather the latter is better, because the water soon freezes and the fowls go thirsty until a fresh supply is given them.

Fig. 90. Barred Plymouth Rock hen with Light Brahma chicks

Reproducing the flock. Fowls are short-lived creatures. They mature in less than a year; their period of greatest productiveness is usually over before they are two years old, and only a very small proportion of a flock are worth keeping after that. Hence the entire stock of fowls on a farm is renewed in two years. Most farmers intend to kill off all their two-year-old hens each year, thus keeping up the number in the flock by growing annually about as many young birds as there are hens in the flock. To allow for losses, for an excess of males, and for inferior pullets which are not worth keeping for layers, it is necessary to hatch about four times as many chickens as are to be reserved.

The hatching season. Most of the chickens reared on farms are hatched in the spring months. The late-hatched chickens are nearly all from hens that steal their nests. People on farms do not want late chickens; among so many larger ones a few small birds have very little chance to make good growth. But those who have a place to keep a few early chickens and time to take care of them often set a few hens in the winter. Eggs will hatch at any season of the year, and chickens will grow if they get proper care; but there is a comparatively short season in the spring when eggs hatch better and chickens grow better than at any other time, and the easiest way to get a given number of good chickens that will be full-grown at the beginning of winter is to hatch them in this natural hatching season. This season cannot be exactly defined, because it varies according to latitude and also from year to year according to the weather. Perhaps the best general rule is to have the first chicks hatch when the grass is beginning to grow. To effect this the hens must be set three weeks earlier, when there may be no signs of spring. No one can time hatches to a natural phenomenon of this kind with certainty, but by planning with reference to the advance of spring in a normal season, the first hatches are usually brought very near to the desired time.

Broody hens. When a hen wants to incubate eggs, or, as the common phrase is, to sit, she remains on her nest continuously and, unless very shy, will not leave it when approached and will resent any interference. The hen is then said to be broody. Because the broody hen makes a clucking noise, she is sometimes called a clucking hen. Hens that are shy when they begin to cluck, and that fly from the nest when approached, usually become tame and allow themselves to be handled after a few days. Broody hens cannot always be obtained at the time they are wanted. In that case there is nothing to do but wait, or try to buy, hire, or borrow them. There is no way of forcing or inducing hens to become broody before they would do so of their own accord. When broody hens are hard to get, people think that hatching with incubators will relieve them of trouble and prevent delay, but the incubator, too, has its uncertainties. Success in artificial hatching requires careful attention to the operation of the incubator and good judgment in adjusting and regulating it.

Fig. 91. Nest boxes, made in pairs, for sitting hens. Inside dimensions: large, 16" × 16" × 18"; small, 12" × 12" × 15"

Fig. 92. Same as Fig. [91], with nest boxes closed

Setting the hens. As many broody hens as can be obtained should be set at the same time. The most convenient style of nest is that shown in Figs. [91] and [92], which can be kept closed if desired. The best nest material is soft hay or straw. In preparing the nest a poultry keeper shapes the nest material with his hand, to give it a bowl shape, pressing it down to make a smooth, firm surface upon which the eggs will lie evenly. It is a good plan to make the nests and place the hens in them, giving to each a few China nest eggs two or three days before the eggs that are to be hatched are given to them. The eggs for hatching should be of good size and shape, with good strong shells, and as uniform in color as can be obtained. The usual number of eggs placed under a hen is thirteen. After the weather becomes warm, even a small hen will cover thirteen eggs well, and medium-sized hens will cover fifteen or sixteen eggs and often hatch every one, but early in the season it is better to give a hen eleven eggs or perhaps only nine. The number of eggs given a hen is almost always an odd number. There is an old superstition that an even number will not hatch. The reason commonly given by writers on poultry is that an odd number of eggs arrange in better form in the nest, but this is mere fancy. However the practice started, the real reason why odd numbers of eggs are placed in nests of sitting hens now is that the custom is so well established, and the habit of thinking of eggs for hatching in odd numbers is so strong, that most poultry keepers do it unconsciously.

Care of sitting hens. The best food for sitting hens is whole corn. As the hen will leave the nest only once a day, and not always daily unless removed, the food is given in a vessel from which she can eat it readily. The usual way is to keep a supply where the hens are, so that whenever they leave the nest they can get something to eat. Whether to let them choose their own time to leave the nest or to keep the nests closed except when they are let off at a regular time each day is a point to be determined in each case according to the circumstances. If all the hens in the same place are quiet and get along well together and do not quarrel for the possession of particular nests, they may be left very much to themselves; otherwise the poultry keeper should regulate things so that there will be no quarreling and no danger of a nest of eggs getting cold while two hens crowd on another nest and break some of the eggs in it.

Besides grain the hens need water and a place to dust. Most sitting hens will dust themselves every time they leave the nest, if they have an opportunity to do so. As lice multiply rapidly on sitting hens, it is a good idea, even when the hen can dust herself, to apply an insect powder to her and to the nest two or three times during the period of incubation.

The eggs may be tested at the end of the seventh day by using a light, as described on page [21]. While fertility can be determined earlier, waiting until the seventh day enables one to tell more surely whether fertility is strong or weak, and to discard weak germs as well as infertile eggs. An infertile egg is clear, that is, shows no signs of development or decay, at every period of incubation. The eggs that rot are fertile eggs in which the germs have died. A rotten egg is distinguished from a fertile egg through the tester by the movement of the line between the transparent air space at the large end of the egg and the dark contents, this movement showing that the contents are in a fluid state. The eggs which are the most opaque and have the air space most distinctly marked are those which have the strongest germs. Eggs that are conspicuously light-colored (as they appear before the light) when compared with these may as well be discarded. If many eggs are discarded, those that remain may be given to a part of the hens, and the rest of the hens reset.

Attention at hatching time. The eggs of medium-sized fowls usually hatch in from twenty to twenty-one days. The eggs of small fowls take about a day less, and those of large fowls about a day more. Hens' eggs have been known to hatch as early as the seventeenth day and as late as the twenty-fourth, but as a rule chickens that come before the nineteenth day or after the twenty-second are weakly. Hens sometimes trample the chickens in the nests or crush the eggs after they are picked, so that the chicken cannot turn to break the shell in the regular manner. Sometimes this is due to the nervousness or to the clumsiness of the hen, but oftener it is caused by the nest being too much dished (that is, hollowed so much that the eggs tend to roll toward the center) or by lice disturbing her. The chickens may be saved either by removing them to other broody hens or by putting them in a flannel wrapping in a warm place. Unless, however, the conditions are bad, it is better to leave them with the hen. Hens with little chicks should be left in the nests until all the eggs that will hatch have hatched and the chicks are dry and begin to show an inclination to run about. Then, if the weather is fine, the hen and her brood may be taken at once to a coop out of doors, but if it is cold or stormy, the little chicks are better indoors.

Fig. 93. Coop for hen and chicks, to be used without run

Coops for broods. The coop for a hen and chickens should be so constructed that they will have plenty of fresh air at night. There should be a small run attached to it, to which the hen can be confined while the chickens run about or come to her to be brooded, as they may wish. It is not a good plan to let a hen run with her brood while the chicks are very small. The chickens do much better if the mother is confined and gives more attention to keeping them warm than to feeding them. The coops should not be placed in the same spot year after year, nor should they be on land upon which the old fowls run during any considerable portion of the year. Sod ground is best.

Fig. 94. Coop to be used with runs, as in Fig. [95]

Feeding young chickens. From early times in America the most common food for young chickens has been corn meal moistened with water. When fresh this is a good food for chickens that run about and eat a great deal of green food, insects, worms, and small seeds, but a mash of scalded corn meal and bran, such as is given old fowls, or a baked johnnycake, is better. There is no need of fussing with such foods as finely chopped hard-boiled eggs, cracker crumbs, pinhead oatmeal, and other things often recommended as most appropriate for the first feeds of little chicks. Healthy hen-hatched chicks raised by the natural method on a farm need nothing but one soft feed (such as has been mentioned) in the morning, a little hard grain toward evening, and then, just before dark, all the soft food they will eat. The best grain for them is sound cracked corn; the next best is wheat. The chickens should have good water always before them, and may be given all the milk they want. Skim milk, sour milk (either thin or clabbered), and buttermilk are all eaten with relish and promote health and growth. Vessels in which milk is given must be cleaned often or they will become very filthy.

Fig. 95. Coops and runs for hens and chicks[11]

[11] Burlap bags are used to shade the interior or to keep out rain. When not in use they are turned back on the top of the coop.

Management of growing chicks. Of course, healthy chickens are growing all the time, and growing at a very rapid rate, too; but after the chicks are weaned, they have usually reached the point in growth when the increase in size in a short period is very noticeable. So poultry keepers commonly speak of chickens from weaning time until maturity as growing chicks. At this time the rudest kind of shelter will suit them as well as any. Indeed, they hardly need shelter from the weather at all. The most essential things are a good range, apart from the old fowls, and an abundance of food. They should be able to pick up a great deal of food for themselves, but should have enough given them to make sure that they always have all the food they can eat. It does not pay to stint them to make them forage farther. Young chickens will always take all the exercise that they need if they have the opportunity, and the more they eat the better they grow.

Fig. 96. Small house for growing chicks, in Maine orchard

Fig. 97. Small house for growing chicks, in orchard in New York State

When the range near their coops ceases to afford them good picking, the coops should be moved to a place where the food to be secured by foraging is more abundant.