This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1871 Excerpt: ...sufficient food during the year, and change of cocks every spring. In summer, with the range they have, his fowls secure a good supply of animal food from the fields, in worms, grubs, bugs, grasshoppers, &c. They are also supplied at all seasons with the refuse scraps from the Metropolitan Hotel. Mr. Leland says: "Egg-making is no easy work, and hens will not do much of it without high feed. They need just what a man who works requires--wheat bread and meat." He feeds wheat, even when it costs $2 per bushel. No old nests are allowed. After each brood is hatched the boxes are taken out and whitewashed inside and out, and after lying in the suu and rain a few days they are half filled with clean straw and returned for use. The old straw is burned. Each of the 250 to 300 hens on hand in the spring is permitted to have one brood during the year. Four or five will have broods the same day, and to the hen which appears to be the best mother all the chicks are given. The others are given a cold bath and placed in confinement a few days, after which they return to the flock and their nests. Mr. Leland produces a great many eggs, which pay for food and attendance, and makes sales of poultry, amounting to several thousand dollars annually. If a hen comes off about the 1st of April with ten chickens, by the middle of June they will weigh twenty pounds and be worth $5. Mr. L. asserts that he can produce a thousand pounds of poultry cheaper than he can produce the same weight of mutton, beef, or pork. He finds as great profit from turkeys as from hens, and greater with more attention. One-year-old turkeys are found to be the best mothers, and gobblers of that age are also preferred. "Three hatchings are put with one turkey in a large coop, half hidden in t...