you are ever in a hen house on a cold winter night, (I hope it will be your own) just notice this. A curtain of old carpeting or heavy gunny sacking to drop over the windows cold winter nights means much in comfort and eggs. The best ventilation we have ever known for a hen house is one or more openings a foot or so wide and perhaps as long again, over which strong gunny sacking has been drawn closely. It stops all drafts, but permits a fair circulation of fresh air. One of the best poultry men in my state has the entire front of one of his hen houses made with strong ducking drawn tightly on both sides of the studding, in place of the usual sheeting and siding up. The house, though crowded, was sweet, dry and comfortable as a house could possibly be, and not a comb was frosted, although it was 40 below during the experiment. Food and Feeding. I have found no better egg ration than wheat and oats in the bundle, for forenoon and principal feed, with corn late in the afternoon, a good, warm, well-seasoned mash of some kind on cold mornings three or four times a week is greatly relished, particularly if mixed up in milk. The grain should be kept in the bundle, and be fully three-fourths wheat. A little millet is excellent, fed in the straw. I. save much labor and other expense by feeding hens, sheep and other stock their grain in the bundle. Early cut corn and oats fed this way to stock gives most satisfactory results with me. A steeply slanting floor in a hen house can be kept dry and clean much easier than a level one. Feed them -bundle grain on the upper end, and straw and everything else will be scratched to the lower end, where there should be a small door to throw it out of. The hens will sometimes scratch it out themselves, if good, live ones. A floor 20 feet long should be at least 18 inches higher at one end than the other. Earth, gravel, or cinders make a much better floor than boards, for a number of reasons. With these surroundings, and the birds and feed described, with plenty of fresh water and green food, and a little fresh meat now and then, it is not a difficult thing to get both pleasure and profit from a large flock of poultry. Clean quarters, with ample range in summer, and as nearly as possible summer conditions in the winter time, are what insure success. DISCUSSION. A Member-What is the interior of your house, lumber or plaster? Mr. Greeley-Lumber, outside and in. Question-Do you like clover hay? Mr. Greeley-Yes; alfalfa or clover help greatly in the winter. Mr. Matteson-Isn't plaster much better to keep down vermin? Mr. Greeley-I have never used plaster; some people think it is a little cold, but I am inclined to favor it. Mr. Matteson · I have used it for years and prefer it. Mrs. Howie-How many hens would you keep in a flock to secure the best results? Mr. Greeley-To secure the very best results, I would want them about 50 to 75 in a bunch, but I can keep 300 hens with three houses easy enough where they have the run of everything and go where they please. Of course, where crowded, large flocks are not profitable. Mr. Matteson-From a winter standpoint, they are more liable to contract bad habits where you have them in large colonies. Mr. Greeley-Yes, but a great variety of food, especially cabbage, fresh meat and well seasoned mashes, will tend to prevent this. Prof. Emery-You do not have four feet of snow out there three months of the year? Mr. Greeley-No, but we have cold weather and sometimes lots of snow. I never have had artificial heat, and wouldn't want to, unless I could be around myself to look after it. Question What grit do your hens have? Mr. Greeley- Nothing but coarse sand and gravel. All they get is in the dust box, but we change that frequently; that should be about one-fifth gravel. Mr. Matteson Are you speaking from a summer or a winter standpoint? - Mr. Greeley Winter, for I want eggs the year round as nearly as possible. Mr. Matteson-You succeed, do you? Mr. Greeley - Oh, yes. From the moulting season to the middle of January our eggs come slowly, but we manage to keep them going pretty well. Mr. Matteson-Do I understand you keep a correct account about your poultry business? Mr. Greeley-I have not kept an account for years, but I did keep a strict account for years when I began. Mr. Matteson-Do you know what is your average, what your hens give of eggs the year around, and the average price? Mr. Greeley-My eggs have averaged me a little over a cent apiece the year around; over a shilling a dozen most of the time, and my hens will average something like 130 to 160 eggs apiece, sometimes more than that. I am too busy now to keep accounts. Mr. Matteson-And it is not necessary to do that. After a man has done it a number of years, he knows how many eggs he is getting and how much it costs him a year. He has learned it from experience. A Member-I differ from you; the account is very necessary. The Chairman-My friend, Mr. Greeley has told you that for years he kept an account, and his hens brought him in a dollar apiece, profit. Mr. Matteson-There is no poultryman who can afford to run an experiment station, and he doesn't need to, to know what he is doing. Mrs. Howie- - What season of the year would you consider the best for hatching stock to be winter layers? Mr. Greeley-I don't like them too early, they are too much trouble and are apt to be stunted in their growth. Mr. Matteson-Then there is danger, where you get them out too early, of their going through a slight moulting in the fall. Mr. Greeley-That is a good point. I prefer to get them out in April and early May on the farm, and then force them along in good shape, and I get excellent returns the next fall and early winter. Question-What breed of Leghorns do you consider best? Mr. Greeley-I have had very good results with the White and the Brown, and I never saw any difference between them. I have Brown now. Mr. Smith-Where you have a large number of hens, three or four or five hundred, and only a few houses, won't they bunch a good deal more than the proper proportion into each house? Mr. Greeley - Not if they are put there, they will keep pretty fairly well apart where you put them. A Member-Is there nothing in color? Do white chickens get to laying earlier than colored? Mr. Greeley-I do not think there is a particle of difference. Mr. Foster-Do you let them run all through your stable with the stock? Mr. Greeley-My stock is sheep altogether. I have only two cows on the farm, and I wouldn't keep but one if I could make it give milk all the year around. There is nothing in the sheep shed that would make trouble as it would with cows. If you have comfortable hen houses, roomy scratching shed, and clean, pleasant quarters, there needn't be any trouble. Mr. Foster--Have you had any experience mixing breeds, two or three different kinds of Leghorns, or do you keep one breed? Mr. Greeley-Just one, the Brown Leghorns. Mr. Matteson-Isn't it a fact that Leghorns will lay more eggs for a certain amount of food consumed than any other fowl? Mr. Greeley-The Leghorns are admittedly, I think, the greatest layers. I have found more profit with them than any other breed. Mrs. Howie Do you use an incubator? Mr. Greeley-No; I suppose that is where I make a mistake. Mr. Matteson-Do you have any trouble making Leghorns set? Mr. Greeley-I don't try to make them, though old ones will set some. Mr. Matteson--I think you would do better if you would use a hatcher. A Member-Do you think it necessary to feed cut food to chickens? Mr. Greeley-If I had it, I would feed it, but if one has a variety of natural food, it will do all right,especially if they are given a little meat. Question-Do you feed any soft food? Mr. Greeley Just a little, about once or twice a week, sometimes ofténer in cold weather. I am only a farmer, not a fancy breeder. Mr. Matteson-In regard to the animal food. A great many of you dairymen are selling off canners and getting a cent and a half a pound. Instead of selling those to the butcher, as you do, I would advise you to butcher them on your own farm and feed them to your fowls, and you would probably realize four or five times as much as you do from your butcher. We slaughter it in the fall, just the same as we would for ourselves, it is stored away, we shut out the sun and lignt, let in the air and it freezes up and stays frozen all during the winter, and we take it out as we want it. The whole carcass is ground up, bone and all, you can put it right through the bone cutter in its frozen condition, and we feed it to the fowls raw. The Chairman-We have had an interesting talk on this poultry subject, and I hope that many of you will go home with the determination to get better results from your poultry. WISCONSIN AS A LIVE STOCK STATE. I believe the topic that I am assigned to talk upon this morning is "Wisconsin as a Live Stock State." At these Closing Farmers' Institutes, we have gone over the practical topics from A to Z and threshed them a sec who gets up the program to interject a little more variety into it, so that the Pulletin will be a little more readable to our farmer friends in Wisconsin. That is one reason why I placed this subject upon the program. Shropshire Lambs, Prize Winners in Senior and Junior Classes at St. Louis World's Fair. Owned by F. W. Harding, Waukesha, Wis. ond and a third time, using a different machine, sometimes going out of the state to get better machines than we have here, until it bothers the person When I, as a boy in my teens, began to raise live stock in Wisconsin, I kept thinking that when I grew a little older and had a few more dollars to invest I would go farther south where the climatic conditions were better, where I could grow live stock cheaper, but, not getting those dollars very fast, not getting to that changing point very rapidly, circumstances seemed to keep me in Wisconsin, and the longer I stayed in this state and the more I studied her live stock conditions, the more I saw Wisconsin's live stock coming up alongside of the live stock from other states, and even from other countries, the more I became educated up to the idea that Wisconsin could possibly grow some of the things that I think prove these statements that I have made. Wisconsin Live Stock as Seen in the Markets. Where do we get a chance to size up Wisconsin live stock alongside of the live stock of other parts of the world? Our average live stock, the grade stock from the farms, as a rule has to be sized up with the live stock from other states in our live stock markets. Many of you just now know about and are thinking about how Wis live stock as well as could these more favored sections. Then my education went on until I got to think Wisconsin could grow live stock as good as the most favored section, and today I think I am advanced far enough to believe that Wisconsin can grow live stock with the best of the world. Of course, it is useless for any man to get up before an intelligent audience like this and make statements of this character unless he can bring something to prove these statements, and so, briefly, I am going to hold up to you Owned by Alex. A. Arnold consin steers sell down in Chicago alongside of the steers from the neighboring states of Illinois, Iowa and Missouri, and you think at once that my statement is proven wrong. If we were to depend just upon the conditions as our steers meet the steers of other states on the average in these live stock markets, I would immediately have to sit down with no more to say, but when we analyze those conditions, we find the trouble is not in Wisconsin, the trouble is not in the conditions surrounding the feeding of these animals in Wisconsin, but the main trouble is up the actual cost of producing that steer as against what they got for him in the Chicago market, that steer had been fed at an actual loss of some 16 or 17 dollars. A year later they fed another class, a high-grade steer, from one of the good beef breeds, put him in the Chicago show; he was not good enough to win a prize and had to be sold for his actual value in the market, and when they figured up with this beef bred steer, it was demonstrated that he had May Duke 8th. Aged Red Polled Bull Owned by J. Slimmer, Wausau, Wis. Prize Winner and Sire of First Prize Young Animals at Wisconsin State Fair, 1905. steer, a very nice smooth one, fed him to the best of their knowledge and ability, and sent him to the Chicago Live Stock Show, where he went into the dressed carcass competition and showed up a very good carcass for a dairy bred steer, and as there was not a heavy competition in that class, such as there is now, they succeeded in winning third prize for that dairy steer, and they sold him for about a cent a pound extra on account of his having taken this prize, but when they figured won back what the other steer had lost, he had made a profit of 17 or 18 dollars, notwithstanding the fact that his dam was an excellent shorthorn dairy cow. Now, if the state of Wisconsin had never fed a dairy steer, but had only fed a beef steer, we Wisconsin people, many of us, would not have lost that 17 or 18 dollars on the one kind of steer before we made it on the other. Now, if Wisconsin stockmen will be ignorant and not intelligent, that is no fault of Wisconsin and her natural con |