A busy hen is a happy hen and a productive hen. Hang a half cabbage up just out of reach in the house on a stormy day and see them train for the standing broad jump! If you can get what is known as "the haslet," really the lungs, heart, and liver of a porker or lamb, you can suspend this in the same way and they will work all the better for it.
RAISING YOUNG CHICKENS
Model chicken coop—open on pleasant days
It is poor practice to set your hens in the chicken house. Prepare as many fresh nests as you expect to need. Put them in the cellar, unused shed, under the porch, or any convenient and protected place. Doors of wire netting or slats are a great convenience. When a hen is broody, take her off the nest the first night and put her into the new place with an artificial egg or two. Ten to one she will stay all right. If not, do not waste time with her. When assured that her mind is unalterably made up, give her thirteen eggs and close the door on her again. Set two or three the same day and later combine the flocks under one hen. Select the eggs with reference to their shape, size, and quality of shell. Misshapen, very large, or very small eggs or those with thin shells are worthless for setting. Set the eggs of the best layers. Every morning take sitters off nests, leave food and water for them, and return in half an hour. Usually they are all back in their places in less time than that. If not, you can replace and shut them in again. In eighteen to twenty-one days the eggs will hatch.
Probably more little chicks die from lice than from any other cause. Preventive measures must begin early. Get fresh, dry insect powder and treat the nest and hen about the third, the ninth, and the fifteenth day of incubation. Rub the powder all through the feathers. Fine dust obstructs the breathing pores of the lice and kills them. When you take the chicks from the nest examine the head, neck, and vent regions of every one. If lice are present a drop of melted lard will put an end to them. Constant vigilance and nothing short of it, will prevent death from lice.
Prop the door open, thus, in rain, wind, or too hot sun
A good home-made lice powder, costing only about four cents a pound, may be made as follows: Mix together one quarter pint crude carbolic acid (90 per cent. pure), and three quarters of a pint of gasolene. Stir into this enough plaster of Paris to take up the liquid, (about two and one half pounds). Mix thoroughly and rub through a wire mosquito screen to break the lumps. This can be used to dust through the feathers, the day after it is made. Keep in a tight jar or box. This powder is the invention of an expert in poultry husbandry.
The coops for hen and chicks need not be ponderous, but they should be rain proof. A coop two and one half feet square with removable roof and floor is not too heavy to handle and answers every purpose. A wire netting run three or four feet long attached to each coop is necessary and this combination will house a hen and from fifteen to twenty chickens.