Fig. 105. Colony houses at Hampton Institute
How the chickens are grown. The number of chickens reared each year on one of these colony farms is usually about equal to the number of fowls kept. Where there are so many hens of a sitting variety, and very early hatching is not practiced, there is rarely any shortage of sitting hens at the time when they are wanted. Usually twenty or thirty hens are set at the same time, and it is expected that they will hatch eight or ten chickens each. Sometimes sixty or seventy hens are set at one time. As it is almost always quite warm when the chickens are hatched, it is customary to give each hen twenty or more chickens. The coops are placed in rows, several rods apart each way, on a piece of grassland that has had no poultry on it for a year or more. Most of the farmers are very particular on this point, and prefer to put the young chickens on land on which there has been no poultry for at least two years. They have learned by experience that under such conditions they can rear a much larger percentage of the chickens hatched, and that the chickens will grow more evenly and mature earlier. In planning the field crops grown on the farm they always try to arrange so that the small chickens may have fresh land not too far from the farmhouse; land seeded to grass the year before is best.
The chickens are fed the same dough as is given to the hens, but are fed oftener. They have a second meal of dough about noon, and their grain supply, which is given in small troughs, is replenished frequently. While the hens are with the chickens the food is placed where the hen confined to the coop can get her share. After the hens are taken away, the dough is thrown on the grass as the cart passes up and down the rows of coops.
Fig. 106. Coop for hen and chicks, used on Rhode Island farm
When the hay has been harvested and the corn has grown tall, a part of the young chickens may be removed from the land where they were started, and the coops placed where they can forage on mowing lands, in cornfields, and wherever they can go without damage to a growing crop. As they become too crowded in the small coops, the cockerels are sold and, if there are still too many birds in a coop, a few pullets are taken from each of the overcrowded coops and new colonies are started, so far from their old associates that they will not find their way back.