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4 TOUKTO Forcing Poultry. Mb. Editor: After earnest solicitation from my correspondents, I have concluded to give you my views on forcing poultry, for publication. Almost every person who raises poultry does it expecting to make money, either from the eggs they lay or the meat they make. There are as many different views as people in relation to the subject under consideration. The majority of casual observers say that to force poultry is to spoil it. I dare to differ with them, and if people will use a little judgment, in connection with the process I shall explain in this article, they will believe in forcing as much as I do, as it is the only sur« way to make a good profit from their fowls. We use hens to hatch our chickens, as a mat ter of economy, comfort, and profit. We can buy hens that will sit first-rate from 15 to 30 weeks each, as we happen to want their services, at 50 cts. to $1 each, according to the season, and S2O worth will hatch 200 chickens every three weeks with no trouble or anxiety on our part, and the manure they make will pay for their feed. We give each hen a clean, roomy box, that costs 20 cts. when roofed and cleaned ready for use, and put in 4 to 6 inches of moist earth ; if cold weather, a woolen cloth over the earth, and a good nest of fine and coarse hay well shaped, then our eggs, from 7 to 15, according to size of hen and temperature of the weather. Small hens the fewest eggs, and if weather and place where set is cool, but few eggs ; then take a hen that has got the sitting fever well on and, we are sure will sit well, and put her on to the nest of eggs, put up our front door and fasten it, and we know that the stream will not get too low in this our natural incubator. All we have to do now is to take off our hen twice a day to eat, drink, wallow, &c., and put her back a few times. Most hens will learn to go on to the right nest themselves in a few days. When we sit a hen she is named, and her name and the strain of eggs she sits on are regis tered in our sitting book, also the date of putting under the eggs ; twenty days after the eggs are expected to begin to hatch. Some responsible person sees tho eggs twice every day, and if one gets broken, or cracked, it is known immediately, and it is removed. It is very important to keep the eggs clean. If the surface gets coated in any way it will in terfere with the process of hatching. After the eggshave been sat on a week they are •looked over by placing them in a tester, made by sticking a piece of looking-glass on to the bottom of a paper box inside, and then mak ing holes in the cover to set eggs in, small end down, and a hole in one end of the cover to look into ; the reflection on the glass will show the condition of the egg. If Miy of the eggs are not going to hatch, they are taken out and good ones put in their place. Eggs from some cause get their shells cracked quite often. If eggs have been sat on 5 or 6 days, and are ahre, if a strip of paper, a little wider than the crack, be covered with mucilage and stuck over the crack, the egg will hatch just as well, if the membrane under the shell is not broken. Care must always be taken to have one-half, at least, ot the original shell unbroken and clean. W hen a chicken hatches it is taken away from the hen, marked with its particular j/ratn-marA:, and placed in a clean box in a temperature of 100 to 103 degrees; the bottom of the box covered one-half with clean sand, suitable for the chicks to eat, and the other one-half with tian net. We put a pane of window-glass in the side of the box when the sand is so the sun can shine in, and stretch a cat's skin tanned with the fur on, or some similar substance, loosely over the other end, just high enough so the < hickens can stand up nearly straight under it Flannel will answer very well for a mother. " e cover the end the mother is in with slats and the other end with wire netting, that sets down over two sides and the end an inch or more to hold it down, and have a mother at an expense of uO cts. that will accommodate from 2 »to ,->o chickens for two or three weeks, as a night room, letting them run out in small runs in day time. He calculate to have from 50 to 150 chickens hatching at the same time, so can have a mother full of one strain ; but it makes no difference, for they are m<u • s,i l*efore putting together. We mark with a darning-needle and white yarn, and •ew it through where we want our mark, in wing- web, toe-web, or any other pdaev, and lie the yarn loosely, cutting it quite short. By the time the yarn comes out there is a hole that w ill never close up. Chickens need onlv heat and gravel for the THE -WAL & WTATW first 12 hours, and then they will begin to pick food. We feed the yolks of eggs boiled hard and mixed with Indian cakes baked hard and pounded up fine (the first 24 hours they only need clear egg-yolks and sand), about one yolk to a gill of fine cake. Feed often and what they will eat up clean. When they are about 36 hours old they will drink water or milk ; we give milk to drink, and mix our cakes with new milk. We increase our egg-feed, putting two yolks to a gill in course of a week, and 6 egg-yolks to a pint at. 1J weeks, and begin to feed cracked and whole wheat once or twice a day. At two weeks’ old we begin to feed boiled meat, and drop our egg-feed, but continue our pounded cake once or twice a day till chicks are 4 weeks old, then use cracked corn as the bulk of our feed after chicks are 4 weeks old— feeding boiled meat two or three times a day. We riddle cracked corn, feeding the coarse part dry, mixed with wheat, in the afternoon, and the fine, mixed with coarse shorts, scalded to gether, in morning ; change once in a while if chicks tire of the regular feed. We feed a good many boiled potatoes with corn-meal and wheat middlings mixed, by mashing the potatoes, meal, &c., together while hot. We find boiled rice a cheap and very desirable feed to change with. One pound of rice will take in 6 pounds of water, and make a good feed for 50 hens. At four weeks xye separate our cockerels and pullets, putting 25 to 50 together in a run 10 feet long, 3| feet wide, and 2.1 feet high, made of narrow boards, with laths nailed on three fourths of an inch apart, on sides, one end, and top. Wifi ‘1 ■pii® fHI r \ ra i k z<\ / / X. / S' off IMPERIAL PEKIN DUCKS. Imported bg Eugens B. Pendleton, Westerly, Rhode Island. We use large boxes or small movable houses for the chickens to roost in and run into in rainy weather, and keep these roostiiig-rooms clean and well littered, making the chickens sit on the ground, or wide roosts, till they are 4 mouths old, as roosting on small sticks will crook their breast-bones. After chickens are 2 or 3 weeks old they will begin to eat green food, grass, oats, clover, cabbage, mashed man gold wurtzels, or onions, potatoes. &o. Our great study is to make them comfortable and furnish them some exercise to keep their appe tites good. Chickens grown and cared for in the above manner will weigh as much at three months old as if, running about, would at six mouths old; and pullets will begin to lay at three to four months old raised our way. (lam speaking of Brown Leghorns.) I do not think White Leg horns or Light Brahmas could stand the con finement. Partridge Cochins do very well, and begin to lay when about 5| months old, and my Worcester Bounty pullets commence laying at 4 to 5) months old. The cockerels are fit to kill at about the age the pullets begin to lay. Brown Leghorns, hatched in March, are fit for broilers in June, and will dress to 3 lbs, and *ell in our market at 60 to 75 cts. per pound, and there is never one tenth as many as would sell at those prices. Some people will say chickens raised in this way cannot be strong and well. I will say that we seldom have a sick fowl, and have hens 5 to 7 years old on our yards that are good layers now, and arc perfectly well, that have never run out a day in their lives, and have been constant layers. I do not approve of forcing all kinds of fowls, or of all the fowls on the yards of any variehr, for we can grow a better exhibition-bird by a slower process, especially of the large-combed varieties, as forc ing tends to make the combs and wattles grow too large and out of shape. Leghorn pullets will be larger if they do not begin to lay until they are 5 or 6 months old. I prefer to choose my breeding stock out of my runs that have been forced for eggs 2 or 3 years, taking the largest and strongest hens, that lay the largest and best formed eggs, and mate them with cockerels from 6 to 10 months old that have never run with pullets or hens. My exhibition cockerels I let run with pullets and hens all I can safely—t. e., and not have them picked. Now that good breed ers can get from ten to one hundred dollars each for exhibition birds of any of the popular varieties they chance to make a specialty of, it pays to take considerable pains to breed thein. I will say here, for the benefit of those who are constantly questioning me in relation to the matter, that my Brown Leghorns lay costantly (except when they are moulting), after they com mence, summer and winter, and if they are in good condition the cockerels and cocks will not freeze their combs or wattles until the mercury falls to 10 degrees above zero, or the pullets or hens until the mercury falls to zero. Still I do not believe it pays to let mercury fall much lower than to 45 or 50 above, in the poultry house, or rise much above 75 degrees except in the small chicken-rooms, where it should be kept to 100 degrees.— Frank J. Ktnn>g f in Poultry \ Bulletin. The Imperial Pekin Ducks represented in the above cut are owned by Mr. Eugene B. Pendle ton, of Westerly, R. 1., one of the most cele- , brated breeders of poultry in Rhode Island, and he has well earned the laurels which he has gained in every show room where he has exhibited. A vot’xo lady in Concord, Mass., there is profit in the poultry business. She commen ced with about sixty fowls in the spring. From these she raised four hundred and fifty chickens. During the sea-on she sold egg- to the amount of S9O, and from September 20th to January 27th she got ready for market one hundred and fifty pair-of chickens, which she sold for $260, mak ing in all $350. A farmee in Chester county, Penn., sold last year, from thirty hens, eggs ami chickens at a net profit of s26*. 91. SEABRIGHT BANTAMS. The beautiful birds (Sebright Bantams) illus trated above are portraits of stock bred by Mr. C. W. Chamberlain, of Arlington, Mass., well known among the poultry men as one of the most successful breeders of this variety, and White-faced Black Spanish, in the New England States. Lice on Chickens. Much has been written in regard to freeing poultry, and especially young chickens, from lice, and a good many recipes given, most of them more or less objectionable or expensive One man objects to the use of lard and sulphur for the reason that it has killed a fine lot of chicks for him; and another that it has made his chickens’ eyes sore ; and one of my neigh bors killed a choice lot of chicks with his ounce of preventive, in the shape of grease without the sulphur, having put it on their heads and under the wings of their mother. 1 use for Asiatics a fiat perch some 2A or 3 inches in width, (as with a narrow perch the breast bones of young birds are apt to become crooked); this I groove to the depth of half an inch with a carpenter’s plow, and fill the groove with dry sulphur, and I strew sulphur about their houses and in their nests, and my fowls are not troubled with lice, nor are they troubled with sore eyes, or any other evil arising from the use of sulphur. G. W. Cleveland. Millington, Mass. For the Rural Southerner. BLACK POLISH. Among the great variety of breeds of domes ticated poultry, none perhaps are so universally admired as the Black Polish. The striking con -1 trast of the white crest, and, in highly-bred specimens, the beautiful iridescent character of the general plumage, never fails to’attract the attention and to elicit the admiration of even such individuals as do not make poultry culture a matter of either amusement or profit. These fowls certainly were one of my most favorite breeds for a number of years, and few persons who have given them a fair trial report of them otherwise than most favorably. Though not large, they are a good-flavored, plump fowl on the table; and as to the production of eggs, few, if any, excel them. E. Hartshorn & Sons, Boston, Massachusetts, make a specialty of this fowl. e. h. For the Rural Southerner. LIGHT BRAHMAS. I have five acres of land for my fowls, and plenty of fresh water. I have about five hun dred, mostly Light Brahmas. I have warm, well-ventilated houses. I have from 12 to 20 in a room. I have spared no expense to improve them, and keep the best stock of Light Brahmas and buff fowls. I have bred them five years. There never has been one particle of cross with any other fowl. They have the best qualities as | layers in winter. When dressed, they weigh from 6 to 10 pounds. The poultry is the best, brings a good price I have kept them up to the standard of excellence the public demands. Nashua, N. 11. C. C. Russell.