HOW TO MAKE HENS LAY IN WINTER.
By J. L. McNaughton
J. L. McNaughton, in Chicago Tribune. Two years ago, in a lecture before the chemistry class at the medical university where I was a student, the professor stated that hens do not lay as many eggs in winter as in summer because they cannot get the necessary food to produce the yolk of the egg, and that if farmers would feed their fowls powdered red albumen in winter, they would have as many eggs as in summer. After the lecture I asked the professor in what quantities and how the albumen should be fed. He said to take a pound of powdered red albumen and mix it with one pound of black or red pepper, ground fine; then every morning to mix some ground feed, half wheat bran and half corn meal, and to each quart of this mixed feed add two teaspoons of the mixed pepper and albumen, then enough hot water to make the feed damp, but not sticky, and give a quart of this hot feed to each twelve hens. Every evening give a quart of whole grain, wheat, or corn, or both mixed, to each twelve fowls, and in two weeks the hens will begin to lay. I wrote to my father and brothers, giving them this recipe, and they and several neighbors tried it last winter with success. The coldest weather did not stop their hens laying. My father keeps one hundred light brahmas. Winter before last they did not lay at all, but on this feed last winter they averaged seven dozen eggs a day all winter. One thing the brahmas used to do to a finish, that was to sit, but last spring father could not get a hen to sit until he quit this feed. My brother bought two hundred and fifty young hens last September, and began giving this feed two weeks ago. He is now getting over two hundred eggs a day.