MONEY IN HENS.
Poultry-keeping is, of course, a scientific business ; but it has never yet been taken in hand scientifically by the general farmer. He has kept hens and bought grain for them, without any sort of consideration for the number of eggs laid by each hen or the nature of the food they require at different seasons or at different times of day. It seems not to have occurred to him that a hen which lays 150 eggs a year is three times as valuable as one that lays 50, or that the food bill may be reduced at the same time that the food value is increased, if the rations are properly analysed and properly given. Nor has he done the grading and marketing in a methodic manner. While milk produce has multiplied till the excess of supply is an embarrassment, poultry-keepers, though they steadily increase, are not yet within imaginable distance of catching up with the demand.
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