Fig. 102. Colony houses at Michigan Agricultural College. (Photograph from the college)
Feeding, care, and results. The hens, being well distributed over the farm, pick a large part of their living. Hard grain (usually cracked corn) is kept always before them in the house, in hoppers which will hold a bag of grain each. Once a day, in the morning, the hens are given a feed of mash (or, as it is called in this locality, dough) of about the same composition as the mash described on page [89]. The dough is cooked in a large iron set-kettle in the evening and left there until it is to be fed the next morning. Then it is loaded into boxes or large tubs on a cart. The cart also carries a barrel of water. As he reaches each house the driver, with a shovel, throws what dough the hens need on the grass near the house. Then he fills the water pail and drives on to the next house. The hens require no more attention until evening, when the man collects the eggs and gives more water where it is necessary.
Fig. 103. Moving one of the houses in Fig. [102]
Fig. 104. Colony houses at Iowa Agricultural College. (Photograph from the college)
Some of the smaller stocks of fowls on these farms—flocks that have been selected with care and are given a little more attention than is usual—give an average annual production of eleven or twelve dozen eggs a hen, but the general average is only eight or nine dozen. Although the profit per hen is small, the compensation for labor and investment is better than on most poultry plants where a much greater product per hen is secured. Even when eggs are the most important money crop on the farm, the care of the laying hens is but a small part of the day's work of the man who looks after them.