their siestas, nor do tree men make their lives hideous with lithographs of impossible fruit on improbable trees.  Whether I am indebted to one or to all of these conditions for my full egg baskets, I am unable to say; but I do not purpose to make any change, for my egg baskets are as full as a reasonable man could wish.  As nearly as I can estimate, my hens give thirty per cent egg returns as a yearly average—­about 120 eggs for each hen in 365 days.  This is more than I ask of them, but I do not refuse their generosity.

Every egg is worth, in my market, 2-1/2 cents, which means that the yearly product of each hen could be sold for $3.  Something more than two thousand dozen are consumed by the home colony or the incubators; the rest find their way to the city in clean cartons of one dozen each, with a stencil of Four Oaks and a guarantee that they are not twenty-four hours old when they reach the middleman.

In return for this $3 a year, what do I give my hens besides a clean house and yard?  A constant supply of fresh water, sharp grits, oyster shells, and a bath of road dust and sifted ashes, to which is added a pinch of insect powder.  Twice each day five pounds of fresh skim-milk is given to each flock of forty.  In the morning they have a warm mash composed of (for 1600 hens) 50 pounds of alfalfa hay cut fine and soaked all night in hot water, 50 pounds of corn meal, 50 pounds of oat meal, 50 pounds of bran, and 20 pounds of either meat meal or cotton-seed meal.  At noon they get 100 pounds of mixed grains—­wheat and buckwheat usually—­with some green vegetables to pick at; and at night 125 to 150 pounds of whole corn.  There are variations of this diet from time to time, but no radical change.  I have read much of a balanced ration, but I fancy a hen will balance her own ration if you give her the chance.

Milk is one of the most important items on this bill of fare, and all hens love it.  It should be fed entirely fresh, and the crocks or earthen dishes from which it is eaten should be thoroughly cleansed each day.  Four ounces for each hen is a good daily ration, and we divide this into two feedings.

Our 1600 hens eat about 75 tons of grain a year.  Add to this the 100 tons which 50 cows will require, 200 tons for the swine, and 25 tons for the horses, and we have 400 tons of grain to provide for the stock on the factory farm.  Nearly a fourth of this, in the shape of bran, gluten meal, oil meal, and meat meal, must be purchased, for we have no way of producing it.  For the other 300 tons we must look to the land or to a low market.  Three hundred tons of mixed grains means something like 13,000 bushels, and I cannot hope to raise this amount from my land at present.

Fortunately the grain market was to my liking in January of 1898; and though there were still more than 7000 bushels in my granary, I purchased 5000 bushels of corn and as much oats against a higher market.  The corn cost 27 cents a bushel and the oats 22, delivered at Exeter, the 10,000 bushels amounting to $2450, to be charged to the farm account.