TEACH CHICKENS TO BROOST.

Globe, Volume XXIII, Issue 2370, 7 November 1881, Page 4

TEACH CHICKENS TO BROOST.

We have referred to this matter before, perhaps, but at this season of the year it is necessary to remind our readers of the necessity of attending to things which need to be looked after now. It is, with most people, the custom to coop the mother hen with her brood and allow her to house them till she decides herself that it is time to wean them and compel them to take care of themselves. This period arrives at an earlier moment with some fowls than with others. A hen whose flesh and vitality have been kept up through incubation, and the care of her young, is disposed to commence laying eggs much earlier than one which becomes thin and worn with confinement. And when she is ready to commence what she supposes is preparation for another hatch, she naturally forsakes the brood already partially grown. She is hardly so cruel in this operation as the so-oalhd “gentle doves,” for she does not “sit up nights ” to drive her terrified and pleading younglings from the nest out into the wide, wide world. She allows them to remain in their old quarters if they choose, while she walks coolly away to the roost and takes her accustomed place among the old flock. The forsaken chickens, worried at the absence of the maternal coverlet, and shivering with the unaccustomed exposure, huddle together, crowding and pushing, each seeking the shelter of the restless mass of complaining ohickendom, till sleep and darkness overtakes them. And this unhealthy practice of passing the night in close, unventilated quarters is kept up by the poor, ignorant creatures till the coop becomes too small to admit their growing bodies, and the slow instinct of the race induces thorn to climb to some higher region during the dark hours. This atep is a decided improvement. It gives them protection from nightly marauders and the bettor air always found at a distance from the surface of the earth, and prevents that close contact with each other which in any individual case of illness or vermin makes the difficulty a general one through the flock.

But this self-taught habit is not, after all, the best for young fowls. Boosting in trees not only exposes them to the variations of the weather and to drenching rains, but it causes much trouble in the autumn, and when they must be housed, to collect them in the evening and carry them to the regular rooating-place of the flock. It is far better that they should be taught at once, by the mother-hen, to know their place «hen roosting - time arrives. For this purpose, therefore, it is best to place the coops in or near the general camping ground. If it is not done at first, when for greater convenience in the frequent feeding of newlyhatched broods they are kept about the house, by all means remove them before the hen decides to abandon them. They become in that way accustomed to the other fowls and to looking out for themselves. And when the mother mounts the roost at night they are sure to follow ber, or at least to got as near to her as possible. The other fowls, that sometimes resent the intrusion of new occupants, are deterred by the mother’s presence from interfering with the chickens, and all is thus easily and naturally arranged.—“ Am. Poultry Yard.” ,