Robert Plamondon's Poultry Newsletter, March 4, 2005

Get The Dollar Hen Cheap at Amazon!

Amazon.com is selling one of my reprinted classics at a ridiculously low price: $11.95 instead of $18.95. If you ever thought you might be interested in a classic of practical free-range poultry-keeping, back in the days when men were men and tractors were horses, take as look at

The Dollar Hen. (The link will take you to the Amazon page for the book.)

I'm very fond of The Dollar Hen. Though a 95-year-old book isn't long on techniques you can cut out and paste down without making changes, it inspired many of best ideas I've ever had on the farm. For instance, it talked about the old-style "fireless brooders," which relied solely on the chicks' body heat. This has never been very practical for very young chicks, but the book points out that it's not a bad gimmick for older ones. I tried it as sort of range brooder to keep chicks comfy when they've first left the brooder house. (I wrote it up on my Web page.)

Of course, I used modern materials, namely aluminized bubble insulation, but the basic concept was from the book, and it wasn't an idea I'd heard elsewhere.

The author, Milo Hastings, was an interesting man. He wrote a classic of science fiction, City of Endless Night, in 1919. He wrote a musical in the Thirties. And he also invented the forced-air electric incubator. You see a foretaste of this in The Dollar Hen, since he has a very long chapter on incubation, which tells you an amazing amount of stuff, much of it still very applicable today, especially if you use a still-air incubator.

Anyway, check it out on

Amazon.com. They're offering a really good deal.

Get 'Em Cheaper On eBay

I'm auctioning books on eBay every week, and people are getting really good deals. Check it out:

Baby Chick Time

I saw baby chicks in the feed store on Monday! I was surprised, because it was still February, but there they were. I wasn't tempted, though, since we have 100 pullet chicks and 100 broiler chicks in the brooder houses already.

As I describe in my book, Success With Baby Chicks, you can tell males from females in some popular breeds. Not with perfect accuracy, but enough so that you can get a flock of 75%-100% hens out of a batch of straight-run feed-store chicks. One method works with Barred Rocks and Silver Laced Wyandottes; the other works with Rhode Island Reds and New Hampshire Reds. Check it out!

Beware of feed stores that offer free chicks without telling you what they are. Sometimes they're surprisingly generous, and then it turns out that they've given you male White Leghorns, which of course will never lay eggs and will grow up to be scrawny and hardly worth butchering. Free chickens can worth a lot less than you paid for them.

March To-Do List

Inspired by a similar list in Jull's Successful Poultry Management, McGraw-Hill, 1943.

• Brood chicks.
• "Break up" broody hens.
• Plant greens for chickens.
• Begin chick scratch after two weeks.
• Eat more eggs and poultry at home.
• Hatch baby chicks.
• Use artificial lights.
• Remove damp or dirty litter.

If you like this newsletter, please send copies to all your friends!

Copyright 2005 by Robert Plamondon. Permission is granted for copying if the material from here to the end of the message is left unaltered.

This newsletter is sent out occasionally by Robert Plamondon to anyone who asks for it, plus the customers of Norton Creek Press, publisher of:

• Success With Baby Chicks by Robert Plamondon
• The Dollar Hen by Milo M. Hastings
• Genetics of the Fowl by Frederick B. Hutt
• Feeding Poultry by Gustave F. Heuser

Norton Creek Press
36475 Norton Creek Road
Blodgett, Oregon 97326

robert@plamondon.com
http://www.plamondon.com/nortoncreekpress.html
 

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