A BOY FEEDS SIX THOUSAND HENS IN HALF AN HOUR
What do you know about that? I saw this feat done last winter by a fourteen-year old California boy, and I took his photograph as he was doing it. What can a boy not do if he has the opportunity? There are other boys who find it a harder task and a more disagreeable one to feed half a dozen hens. A boy can feed six thousand hens and gather two or three thousand eggs a day and go to school.
This California boy had a gray pony to help him, but what enabled him to perform this feat day after day was system. His uncle, the owner of the farm, had planned the work to make it easy. The farm contains one hundred and twenty acres, and the six thousand hens are scattered over the whole farm in colony houses. The system of feeding was a liberal feed of soft mash in the morning. Three colony houses were placed together. The middle one was a laying house; the other two, roosting houses. In one end of the laying house there was a wheat bin holding several sacks of wheat. The bin was a self-feeding hopper. After dinner the fourteen-year old boy jumped on his gray horse and made the rounds of the houses, opening a door to the hopper of wheat, so that the hens could eat at will during the afternoon. It took just a moment to jump off of his horse, open the door, and jump on again, the horse going on the lope between the houses. He made the rounds in less than half an hour. About three or four o'clock he hitched his pony to a low wagon and visited all the houses, gathering the eggs. This was a bigger job than feeding the hens; he could not go as fast with the eggs. In the morning, about seven o'clock, he makes the rounds of the houses, and without getting off his horse opens the doors to the laying houses, and does it all in fifteen minutes. What do you know about that?
James Dryden