ANOTHER PRIZE WINNER'S STORY
During the time that I have been taking care of poultry I have been successful. I only had six chickens in the Oregon Junior Poultry Contest, five hens and a rooster, but I have about fifty other chickens to take care of. The chickens that I had in the contest were Black Minorcas, but I also raise White Wyandottes. I seem to have better success with my White Wyandottes than with my Black Minorcas. The house I have for the contest chickens is twelve feet wide and six feet long. The place they roost in is four feet by six and the rest is a scratching shed, which is eight feet by six. The house is open front and has a ground floor, which is dry and the chickens can dust in it.
I feed them three times a day, grain morning and noon, which I feed in litter, and a warm mash at night so they can go to roost warm. I also keep bran, charcoal, and grit before them all the time. I have a bone cutter, and feed cut bone to my chickens once a week. I clean off the drop board every morning, and once a week I coal-oil the roost and where the roost rests. During this cold weather I do not let the chickens out very early and when it is raining I do not let them out at all. Every night after the chickens have gone to roost I go out and throw a little grain in their litter and that gives them something to do the first thing in the morning.
I am sorry that I did not have a photograph of myself to send you.
Frank Mitchell
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