Club Minutes: Sandy Spring Pigeon Club, 1910-1913

[those indec. ] In sees no reason why a must [pro] folllowing, that the beef good order in [thought], regularly, that we or coming to its [i ]any manner that [ite 4 chause] its meetings to an [afterward], the [elas] to continue its afte meetings, so good from for future.

Secetary's Report for Term ending Jan. 20, 1911.

The secretary reports the formal organization of the Club on Feb.18 1910 with a membership of thirteen. Since then we have gained three, lost one, and have one away on leave, with two honary members in addition. Today we have fifteen members in good standing. The attendance average has been high thruout the year, a full membership being generally present. Programs have as a rule been fully carried out, and business matters are now handled in a most business like manner and with little confusion.

as the results of our conclusion, the Secretary we should not have years, and urges the members continue a meetings, that they they place the club fees that they reframe from at the club is going to meetings that will to bring it in disagree to be discontinued Secretary urges the practice of singing that we can be in entertain guests.

THE SECRET OF MAKING $1,300 A YEAR FROM 700 HENS MR. O. D. WELLS of Somerset County, Me., is making $1,300 a year from his floc of 700 hens, and has after only four years' experience had remarkable success in raising his chickens. This year from a flock of 1,200 chickens he has lost practically none. How he has accomplished this is simple. He has a brooder hous that is 100 feet long by 12 feet wide. It is divided into three euqal parts, each having its own yard. These occupy about an acre. In this house he runs his incubators, of which he has three. He runs these three times, starting about February 15th. The first hatch is put into the west end of the house and the second into the centre. When the third lot is hatched he takes the brooders from the olest chicks and sets them up in the third section, taking away the incubators entirely. Here is where Mr. Wells claims that he has had his greatest success. While the chickens are hathing he has his yards plowed and seeded to oats. By the time the chickens come from their brooders the oats are up, and teh chicks are turned into the yards and feed upon the green stuff. This is the salvation of the little chicks. They begin to stock up and show a growth and healthy look that is seldom equalled. He ususally starts the chicks on commercial chick food. At the end of the first week he adds dry mash, and after the chickes are three weeks old the food is gradually shifted to cracked corn and hard grains. As long as the market keeps up he continues to kill of the cockerels as broilers. After that those remaining are put into a special yard and finished as roasters. The pullets remain in the brooder house until October. The breeds which he has found the most satisfactory and which he now keeps are the Rhode Island Reds and the Barred and the White Plymouth Rocks. All the pullets he keeps each year for layers. Also 250 of the best year-old hens he puts into pens by themselved in the fall for breeding purposes. in this way when it is time to breed, all there is to do is to put in the cockerels, three being run with each pen of twenty-five hens and four with the larger pens. New blood is introduced every third generation through purchased males. In September the other hens are all killed off and sent to a wholesale marketman in Boston where Mr. Wells always sells all of his poultry and eggs. He finds this very satisfactory, for he strives to maintain the high quality of his products and received in return the highest prices of the market, though having to ship a distance of 230 miles. He has too much stuff to sell to bother with uncertain local markets and besides gets better prices in teh "Hub." This killing of the old hens lasts about a month. Then when the hen house is ready for occupancy, the new pullets are shifted to their permanent places in it from the brooder house where the first half of their lilves has been spent. Mr. Wells has a hard and fast rule never to move his hens about more than is absolutely necessary. An accurate account of what each pen of hens is doing is kept though no trap nests are used to determin the layers, as Mr. Wells believes that a vigorous pullet must lay if given the proper food to make eggs. From the first year of his poultry business he has ben able to tell just what the cost and the profit of running his business amounted to. He now uses the same hen house he started with, it being of the open window-front type with curtained roosting closets. It is 15 x 263, and is divided into ten pens 15 x 20 ft. and four pens 12 x 15 ft., with sixty birds in the larger and twenty-five in the smaller pens. One hudred-foot yards for each pen extend ot the north of the house. By carefully watching the effect of different feeds he has constantly increased his profit, though never increasing the number of hens. He feeds regularly several times a day and never loafs away from home when feeding time has come. Dry mash forms the mainstay of the hens' food. In the morning and at night they have hard grains, either corn, wheat, or otas, in deep litter, the amount of grain bieng determined by the weather, the egg yield, and the condition of the hens; to get the best results is a science of itself. About noon, winter and summer, they are fed some kind of green stuff. In early spring it is rye, from which, as he sows it thick, he is able to cut three crops before it becomes too tough. Later, clover and alfalfa are used, and last of all mangle beets and other vegetables. All of this green stuff he raises on his poultry farm, which is quite remarkable when you consider that he has only three acres for house, barn, poultry house and brodder, and cultivation, and besides raises stuff for a horse and couw and has a vegatable garden. he does this by keeping most of the land in cultivation all the time. He places a good deal of emphasis on green food to increase profit One thing in Mr. Well's favor is the kind of soil on which his farm is situated. It is sandy loam, perfectly drained. His spring sowing of oats in teh checken yards sweetens the soil there yearly. He has never had much trouble with vermin. His preventative measures are to spary the roosts regularly with crude petroleum. The brooder are alos sprayed, and ample opportunities for dust batsh take care of other parasites. John E. Taylor

STOCK and POULTCONDUCTED BY DAVID PHELPS THE REVIVAL OF A PROFITABLE OLD-TIME INDUSTRY AN industry of great importance to New England and the East generally a few years ago, but which has been abandoned with great loss to many farms, was the rearing and training of draft oxen, now being revived. The ox is highly valued as a draft animal the world over; the sweet, hillside pasturage of the temperate zone is eminently adapted to the growth of good steers, and the expense of raising calves until they are two years old is light. At this age they are ready to begin training, and can perform many useful labors, that are not heavy, so paying their way; and never afterward will they need to be in debt to their owner. It was formerly the custom of most farmers to raise from one to five pairs of steer calves, and sometimes as high as a dozen, each year. The matching and training of the calves began before they were six months old, frequently, and was continued daily in winter, forming a regular portion of the winter's work. Strings of yound steers make a tireless machine for the breaking of snow-blocked roads, logging, lumbering, the gathering of the delectable maple sap, sledding out of the manure, and not least, the drawing home of the winter's wood. The wood pile is and always will be a feature of real country life. Steers readily conform to the need of a steady plow power, while their activity on the harrow is proverbial, and their food, nibbled at noontide along the highway or in the near-by "ox pasture," makes quite a difference on the books, from the expense of grain usually bought for horse teams. They accept every phase of farm work with cheerfulness, even to the dragging of mowing machines, to which they are quickly trained; also the big hay wagon with its automatic loader. The great strength of the bovine race makes it of special usefulness in any place where heavy weights are to be moved and where there is continuous rough, hard work. The individuals rarely develop nervousness, or fret or chafe under stress of hardship; they hold their own admirably, never perspire through the skin, and require little if any money to be spent for grain, shoeing, harness, blankets, clipping or other things which horses find indispensable. The ox is not necessarily intolerably slow in gait, for his walk depends much upon his breed, and the training received when a steer. The most satisfactory ox team is the one that is bred and reared on the home farm, though many men have made a neat annual profit buying steers at three years old past and unbroken, training them to usefulness in winter, and after having their services for a year, selling them when opportunity and the season's harvest permitted. Old-fashioned farmers following this method usually had two or three yokes on hand all the time, so that as fast as one team was sold, more were ready to take its place. The high price of horses and of horse feed is at least in part the cause of the return to these useful, general purpose teams. their period of activity is not so long as that of the horse, but if accident or unsoundness befall them they are still of utility for beef, while horses of similar worth may prove a total loss. The diseases to which oxen are subject are comparatively few, and unsoundness does not happen to them so readily as horses when at continuous severe labor. Because of this reason in part, many rural towns prefer grass fattened "turned" to A keen know acteristics and person intenting---life. If the farm---this insight, it---cattle man' in though many ---ing and----