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Show ; ic.r - J J HENS NEED MUCH EXERCISE Chicken That Scratches Is One With Quick Move, Brightest Comb and Best Egg Record. The question of exercise is one that the poultrymen cannot study too carefully. care-fully. To keep in good health and profit, all animal kind must take the proper amount of exercise, or they will become sluggish and diseased. It Is not a very difficult matter to get the hens down to work and if this duty is involved upon them in early life they will not forget their "early training," and will know that in order to have everything to eat they must work for it. Exercise prevents overfat in fow-ls. Overfat is a diseased condition, the penalty sooner or later being death. A too-fat hen is an indifferent layer producing eggs of all shapes and conditions. con-ditions. It is, generally, the over-fat hen that lays soft-shelled eggs. It is the breaking of these eggs in the nest that leads on to the vice-of egg eating. One trouble after another follows this neglect of not having the hens exercise. The hen that scratches is the one' that has the quick move, the brightest bright-est comb, the happy air, and the best egg record. She is business clean through. The idle hen should not be tolerated. Esrly morning exercise is of untold value, especially during cold weather. If the fowl can get off the roost and at. once get down to scratching, it will not only put itself into condition for the day, but it will greedily pick up its feed and properly digest it. Contagious diseases do not, as a rule, find victims in busy fowls it is invariably in-variably the idler that takes to everything every-thing that comes around. One of the greatest reasons why the hens of today are better layers than they were in our forefathers' days is the fact that our present day poultrymen have discovered that the fowls must bo induced to exercise, and it is a rule to compel them to do so. |
