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Cottage Economy

<h2>No. VII.</h2> <h3>BEES, FOWLS, &c. &c.</h3> 159. I now proceed to treat of objects of less importance than the foregoing, but still such as may be worthy of great attention. If all of them cannot be expected to come within the scope of a labourer’s family, some of them must, and others may: and it is always of great consequence, that children be brought up to set a just value upon all useful things, and especially upon all living things; to know the utility of them: for, without this, they never, when grown up, are worthy of being entrusted with the care of them. One of the greatest, and, perhaps, the very commonest, fault of servants, is their inadequate care of animals committed to their charge. It is a well-known saying that “the master’s eye makes the horse fat,” and the remissness to which this alludes, is generally owing to the servant not having been brought up to feel an interest in the well-being of animals.   <h3>BEES.</h3> 160. It is not my intention to enter into a history of this insect about which so much has been written, especially by the French naturalists. It is the useful that I shall treat of, and that is done in not many words. The best hives are those made of clean unblighted rye-straw. Boards are too cold in England. A swarm should always be put into a new hive, and the sticks should be new that are put into the hive for the bees to work on; for, if the hive be old, it is not so wholesome, and a thousand to one but it contain the embryos of moths and other insects injurious to bees. Over the hive itself there should be a cap of thatch, made also of clean rye straw; and it should not only be new when first put on the hive; but a new one should be made to supply the place of the former one every three or four months; for when the straw begins to get rotten, as it soon does, insects breed in it, its smell is bad, and its effect on the bees is dangerous. 161. The hive should be placed on a bench, the legs of which mice and rats cannot creep up. Tin round the legs is best. But even this will not keep down ants, which are mortal enemies of bees. To keep these away, if you find them infest the hive, take a green stick and twist it round in the shape of a ring to lay on the ground round the leg of the bench, and at a few inches from it; and cover this stick with tar. This will keep away the ants. If the ants come from one home, you may easily trace them to it; and when you have found it, pour boiling water on it in the night, when all the family are at home. This is the only effectual way of destroying ants, which are frequently so troublesome. It would be cruel to cause this destruction, if it were not necessary to do it, in order to preserve the honey, and indeed the bees too. 162. Besides the hive and its cap, there should be a sort of shed, with top, back, and ends, to give additional protection in winter; though in summer hives may be kept too hot, and in that case the bees become sickly and the produce becomes light. The situation of the hive is to face the South-east; or, at any rate, to be sheltered from the North and the West. From the North always, and from the West in winter. If it be a very dry season in summer, it contributes greatly to the success of the bees, to place clear water near their home, in a thing that they can conveniently drink out of; for if they have to go a great way for drink, they have not much time for work. 163. It is supposed that bees live only a year; at any rate it is best never to keep the same stall, or family, over two years, except you want to increase your number of hives. The swarm of this summer should always be taken in the autumn of next year. It is whimsical to save the bees when you take the honey. You must feed them; and, if saved, they will die of old age before the next fall; and though young ones will supply the place of the dead, this is nothing like a good swarm put up during the summer. 164. As to the things that bees make their collections from, we do not, perhaps, know a thousandth part of them; but of all the blossoms that they seek eagerly that of the Buck-wheat stands foremost. Go round a piece of this grain just towards sunset, when the buck-wheat is in bloom, and you will see the air filled with bees going home from it in all directions. The buck-wheat, too, continues in bloom a long while; for the grain is dead ripe on one part of the plant, while there are fresh blossoms coming out on the other part. 165. A good stall of bees, that is to say, the produce of one, is always worth about two bushels of good wheat. The cost is nothing to the labourer. He must be a stupid countryman indeed who cannot make a bee-hive; and a lazy one indeed if he will not, if he can. In short, there is nothing but care demanded; and there are very few situations in the country, especially in the south of England, where a labouring man may not have half a dozen stalls of bees to take every year. The main things are to keep away insects, mice, and birds, and especially a little bird called the bee-bird; and to keep all clean and fresh as to the hives and coverings. Never put a swarm into an old hive. If wasps, or hornets, annoy you, watch them home in the day time; and in the night kill them by fire, or by boiling water. Fowls should not go where bees are, for they eat them. 166. Suppose a man get three stalls of bees in a year. Six bushels of wheat give him bread for an eighth part of the year. Scarcely any thing is a greater misfortune than shiftlessness. It is an evil little short of the loss of eyes or of limbs.   <h3>GEESE.</h3> 167. They can be kept to advantage only where there are green commons, and there they are easily kept; live to a very great age; and are amongst the hardiest animals in the world. If well kept, a goose will lay a hundred eggs in a year. The French put their eggs under large hens of common fowls, to each of which they give four or five eggs; or under turkies, to which they give nine or ten goose-eggs. If the goose herself sit, she must be well and regularly fed, at, or near to, her nest. When the young ones are hatched, they should be kept in a warm place for about four days, and fed on barley-meal, mixed, if possible, with milk; and then they will begin to graze. Water for them, or for the old ones to swim in, is by no means necessary, nor, perhaps, ever even useful. Or, how is it, that you see such fine flocks of fine geese all over Long Island (in America) where there is scarcely such a thing as a pond or a run of water? 168. Geese are raised by grazing; but to fat them something more is required. Corn of some sort, or boiled Swedish turnips. Some corn and some raw Swedish turnips, or carrots, or white cabbages, or lettuces, make the best fatting. The modes that are resorted to by the French for fatting geese, nailing them down by their webs, and other acts of cruelty, are, I hope, such as Englishmen will never think of. They will get fat enough without the use of any of these unfeeling means being employed. He who can deliberately inflict torture upon an animal, in order to heighten the pleasure his palate is to receive in eating it, is an abuser of the authority which God has given him, and is, indeed, a tyrant in his heart. Who would think himself safe, if at the mercy of such a man? Since the first edition of this work was published, I have had a good deal of experience with regard to geese. It is a very great error to suppose that what is called a Michaelmas goose is the thing. Geese are, in general, eaten at the age when they are called green geese; or after they have got their full and entire growth, which is not until the latter part of October. Green geese are tasteless squabs; loose flabby things; no rich taste in them; and, in short, a very indifferent sort of dish. The full-grown goose has solidity in it; but it is hard, as well as solid; and in place of being rich, it is strong. Now, there is a middle course to take; and if you take this course, you produce the finest birds of which we can know any thing in England. For three years, including the present year, I have had the finest geese that I ever saw, or ever heard of. I have bought from twenty to thirty every one of these years. I buy them off the common late in June, or very early in July. They have cost me from two shillings to three shillings each, first purchase. I bring the flock home, and put them in a pen, about twenty feet square, where I keep them well littered with straw, so as for them not to get filthy. They have one trough in which I give them dry oats, and they have another trough where they have constantly plenty of clean water. Besides these, we give them, two or three times a day, a parcel of lettuces out of the garden. We give them such as are going to seed generally; but the better the lettuces are, the better the geese. If we have no lettuces to spare, we give them cabbages, either loaved or not loaved; though, observe, the white cabbage as well as the white lettuce, that is to say, the loaved cabbage and lettuce, are a great deal better than those that are not loaved. This is the food of my geese. They thrive exceedingly upon this food. After we have had the flock about ten days, we begin to kill, and we proceed once or twice a week till about the middle of October, sometimes later. A great number of persons who have eaten of these geese have all declared that they did not imagine that a goose could be brought to be so good a bird. These geese are altogether different from the hard, strong things that come out of the stubble fields, and equally different from the flabby things called a green goose. I should think that the cabbages or lettuces perform half the work of keeping and fatting my geese; and these are things that really cost nothing. I should think that the geese, upon an average, do not consume more than a shilling’s worth of oats each. So that we have these beautiful geese for about four shillings each. No money will buy me such a goose in London; but the thing that I can get nearest to it, will cost me seven shillings. Every gentleman has a garden. That garden has, in the month of July, a wagon-load, at least, of lettuces and cabbages to throw away. Nothing is attended with so little trouble as these geese. There is hardly any body near London that has not room for the purposes here mentioned. The reader will be apt to exclaim, as my friends very often do, “Cobbett’s Geese are all Swans.” Well, better that way than not to be pleased with what one has. However, let gentlemen try this method of fatting geese. It saves money, mind, at the same time. Let them try it; and if any one, who shall try it, shall find the effect not to be that which I say it is, let him reproach me publicly with being a deceiver. The thing is no invention of mine. While I could buy a goose off the common for half-a-crown, I did not like to give seven shillings for one in London, and yet I wished that geese should not be excluded from my house. Therefore I bought a flock of geese, and brought them home to Kensington. They could not be eaten all at once. It was necessary, therefore, to fix upon a mode of feeding them. The above mode was adopted by my servant, as far as I know, without any knowledge of mine; but the very agreeable result made me look into the matter; and my opinion, that the information will be useful to many persons, at any rate, is sufficient to induce me to communicate it to my readers.   <h3>DUCKS.</h3> 169. No water, to swim in, is necessary to the old, and is injurious to the very young. They never should be suffered to swim (if water be near) till more than a month old. The old duck will lay, in the year, if well kept, ten dozen of eggs; and that is her best employment; for common hens are the best mothers. It is not good to let young ducks out in the morning to eat slugs and worms; for, though they like them, these things kill them if they eat a great quantity. Grass, corn, white cabbages, and lettuces, and especially buck-wheat, cut, when half ripe, and flung down in the haulm. This makes fine ducks. Ducks will feed on garbage and all sorts of filthy things; but their flesh is strong, and bad in proportion. They are, in Long Island, fatted upon a coarse sort of crab, called a horse-foot fish, prodigious quantities of which are cast on the shores. The young ducks grow very fast upon this, and very fat; but wo unto him that has to smell them when they come from the spit; and, as for eating them, a man must have a stomach indeed to do that! 170. When young, they should be fed upon barley-meal, or curds, and kept in a warm place in the night-time, and not let out early in the morning. They should, if possible, be kept from water to swim in. It always does them harm; and, if intended to be sold to be killed young, they should never go near ponds, ditches, or streams. When you come to fat ducks, you must take care that they get at no filth whatever. They will eat garbage of all sorts; they will suck down the most nauseous particles of all those substances which go for manure. A dead rat three parts rotten is a feast to them. For these reasons I should never eat any ducks, unless there were some mode of keeping them from this horrible food. I treat them precisely as I do my geese. I buy a troop when they are young, and put them in a pen, and feed them upon oats, cabbages, lettuces, and water, and have the place kept very clean. My ducks are, in consequence of this, a great deal more fine and delicate than any others that I know any-thing of.   <h3>TURKEYS.</h3> 171. These are flying things, and so are common fowls. But it may happen that a few hints respecting them may be of use. To raise turkeys in this chilly climate, is a matter of much greater difficulty than in the climates that give great warmth. But the great enemy to young turkeys (for old ones are hardy enough) is the wet. This they will endure in no climate; and so true is this, that, in America, where there is always “a wet spell” in April, the farmers’ wives take care never to have a brood come out until that spell is passed. In England, where the wet spells come at haphazard, the first thing is to take care that young turkeys never go out, on any account, except in dry weather, till the dew be quite off the ground; and this should be adhered to till they get to be of the size of an old partridge, and have their backs well covered with feathers. And, in wet weather, they should be kept under cover all day long. 172. As to the feeding of them, when young, various nice things are recommended. Hard eggs chopped fine, with crumbs of bread, and a great many other things; but that which I have seen used, and always with success, and for all sorts of young poultry, is milk turned into curds. This is the food for young poultry of all sorts. Some should be made fresh every day; and if this be done, and the young turkeys kept warm, and especially from wet, not one out of a score will die. When they get to be strong, they may have meal and grain, but still they always love the curds. 173. When they get their head feathers they are hardy enough; and what they then want is room to prowl about. It is best to breed them under a common hen; because she does not ramble like a hen-turkey; and it is a very curious thing that the turkeys bred up by a hen of the common fowl, do not themselves ramble much when they get old; and for this reason, when they buy turkeys for stock, in America, (where there are such large woods, and where the distant rambling of turkeys is inconvenient,) they always buy such as have been bred under the hens of the common fowl; than which a more complete proof of the great powers of habit is, perhaps, not to be found. And ought not this to be a lesson to fathers and mothers of families? Ought not they to consider that the habits which they give their children are to stick by those children during their whole lives? 174. The hen should be fed exceedingly well, too, while she is sitting and after she has hatched; for though she does not give milk, she gives heat; and, let it be observed, that as no man ever yet saw healthy pigs with a poor sow, so no man ever saw healthy chickens with a poor hen. This is a matter much too little thought of in the rearing of poultry; but it is a matter of the greatest consequence. Never let a poor hen sit; feed the hen well while she is sitting, and feed her most abundantly when she has young ones; for then her labour is very great; she is making exertions of some sort or other during the whole twenty-four hours; she has no rest; is constantly doing something or other to provide food or safety for her young ones. 175. As to fatting turkeys, the best way is, never to let them be poor. Cramming is a nasty thing, and quite unnecessary. Barley-meal, mixed with skim-milk, given to them, fresh and fresh, will make them fat in a short time, either in a coop, in a house, or running about. Boiled carrots and Swedish turnips will help, and it is a change of sweet food. In France they sometimes pick turkeys alive, to make them tender; of which I shall only say, that the man that can do this, or order it to be done, ought to be skinned alive himself.   <h3>FOWLS.</h3> 176. These are kept for two objects; their flesh and their eggs. As to rearing them, every thing said about rearing turkeys is applicable here. They are best fatted, too, in the same manner. But, as to laying-hens, there are some means to be used to secure the use of them in winter. They ought not to be old hens. Pullets, that is, birds hatched in the foregoing spring, are, perhaps, the best. At any rate, let them not be more than two years old. They should be kept in a warm place, and not let out, even in the day-time, in wet weather; for one good sound wetting will keep them back for a fortnight. The dry cold, even in the severest cold, if dry, is less injurious than even a little wet in winter-time. If the feathers get wet, in our climate, in winter, or in short days, they do not get dry for a long time; and this it is that spoils and kills many of our fowls. 177. The French, who are great egg-eaters, take singular pains as to the food of laying-hens in winter. They let them out very little, even in their fine climate, and give them very stimulating food; barley boiled, and given them warm; curds, buck-wheat, (which, I believe, is the best thing of all except curds;) parsley and other herbs chopped fine; leeks chopped in the same way; also apples and pears chopped very fine; oats and wheat cribbled; and sometimes they give them hemp-seed, and the seed of nettles; or dried nettles, harvested in summer, and boiled in the winter. Some give them ordinary food, and, once a day, toasted bread sopped in wine. White cabbages chopped up are very good in winter for all sorts of poultry. 178. This is taking a great deal of pains; but the produce is also great and very valuable in winter; for, as to preserved eggs, they are things to run from and not after. All this supposes, however, a proper hen-house, about which we, in England, take very little pains. The vermin, that is to say, the lice, that poultry breed, are the greatest annoyance. And as our wet climate furnishes them, for a great part of the year, with no dust by which to get rid of these vermin, we should be very careful about cleanliness in the hen-houses. Many a hen, when sitting, is compelled to quit her nest to get rid of the lice. They torment the young chickens. And, in short, are a great injury. The fowl-house should, therefore, be very often cleaned out; and sand, or fresh earth, should be thrown on the floor. The nest should not be on shelves, or on any-thing fixed; but little flat baskets, something like those that the gardeners have in the markets in London, and which they call sieves, should be placed against the sides of the house upon pieces of wood nailed up for the purpose. By this means the nests are kept perfectly clean, because the baskets are, when necessary, taken down, the hay thrown out, and the baskets washed; which cannot be done, if the nest be made in any-thing forming a part of the building. Besides this, the roosts ought to be cleaned every week, and the hay changed in the nests of laying-hens. It is good to fumigate the house frequently by burning dry herbs, juniper wood, cedar wood, or with brimstone; for nothing stands so much in need of cleanliness as a fowl-house, in order to have fine fowls and plenty of eggs. 179. The ailments of fowls are numerous, but they would seldom be seen, if the proper care were taken. It is useless to talk of remedies in a case where you have complete power to prevent the evil. If well fed, and kept perfectly clean, fowls will seldom be sick; and, as to old age, they never ought to be kept more than a couple or three years; for they get to be good for little as layers, and no teeth can face them as food. 180. It is, perhaps, seldom that fowls can be kept conveniently about a cottage; but when they can, three, four, or half a dozen hens to lay in winter, when the wife is at home the greater part of the time, are worth attention. They would require but little room, might be bought in November and sold in April, and six of them, with proper care, might be made to clear every week the price of a gallon of flour. If the labour were great, I should not think of it; but it is none; and I am for neglecting nothing in the way of pains in order to ensure a hot dinner every day in winter, when the man comes home from work. As to the fatting of fowls, information can be of no use to those who live in a cottage all their lives; but it may be of some use to those who are born in cottages, and go to have the care of poultry at richer persons’ houses. Fowls should be put to fat about a fortnight before they are wanted to be killed. The best food is barley-meal wetted with milk, but not wetted too much. They should have clear water to drink, and it should be frequently changed. Crammed fowls are very nasty things: but “barn-door” fowls, as they are called, are sometimes a great deal more nasty. Barn-door would, indeed, do exceedingly well; but it unfortunately happens that the stable is generally pretty near to the barn. And now let any gentleman who talks about sweet barn-door fowls, have one caught in the yard, where the stable is also. Let him have it brought in, killed, and the craw taken out and cut open. Then let him take a ball of horse-dung from the stable-door; and let his nose tell him how very small is the difference between the smell of the horse-dung, and the smell of the craw of his fowl. In short, roast the fowl, and then pull aside the skin at the neck, put your nose to the place, and you will almost think that you are at the stable door. Hence the necessity of taking them away from the barn-door a fortnight, at least, before they are killed. We know very well that ducks that have been fed upon fish, either wild ducks, or tame ducks, will scent a whole room, and drive out of it all those who have not pretty good constitutions. It must be so. Solomon says that all flesh is grass; and those who know any-thing about beef, know the difference between the effect of the grass in Herefordshire and Lincolnshire, and the effect of turnips and oil cake. In America they always take the fowls from the farm-yard, and shut them up a fortnight or three weeks before they be killed. One thing, however, about fowls ought always to be borne in mind. They are never good for any-thing when they have attained their full growth, unless they be capons or poullards. If the poulets be old enough to have little eggs in them, they are not worth one farthing; and as to the cocks of the same age, they are fit for nothing but to make soup for soldiers on their march, and they ought to be taken for that purpose.   <h3>PIGEONS.</h3> 181. A few of these may be kept about any cottage, for they are kept even in towns by labourers and artizans. They cause but little trouble. They take care of their own young ones; and they do not scratch, or do any other mischief in gardens. They want feeding with tares, peas, or small beans; and buck-wheat is very good for them. To begin keeping them, they must not have flown at large before you get them. You must keep them for two or three days, shut into the place which is to be their home; and then they may be let out, and will never leave you, as long as they can get proper food, and are undisturbed by vermin, or unannoyed exceedingly by lice. 182. The common dove-house pigeons are the best to keep. They breed oftenest, and feed their young ones best. They begin to breed at about nine months old, and if well kept, they will give you eight or nine pair in the year. Any little place, a shelf in the cow shed; a board or two under the eaves of the house; or, in short, any place under cover, even on the ground floor, they will sit and hatch and breed up their young ones in. 183. It is not supposed that there could be much profit attached to them; but they are of this use; they are very pretty creatures; very interesting in their manners; they are an object to delight children, and to give them the early habit of fondness for animals and of setting a value on them, which, as I have often had to observe before, is a very great thing. A considerable part of all the property of a nation consists of animals. Of course a proportionate part of the cares and labours of a people appertain to the breeding and bringing to perfection those animals; and, if you consult your experience, you will find that a labourer is, generally speaking, of value in proportion as he is worthy of being intrusted with the care of animals. The most careless fellow cannot hurt a hedge or ditch; but to trust him with the team, or the flock, is another matter. And, mind, for the man to be trust-worthy in this respect, the boy must have been in the habit of being kind and considerate towards animals; and nothing is so likely to give him that excellent habit as his seeing, from his very birth, animals taken great care of, and treated with great kindness by his parents, and now-and-then having a little thing to call his own.   <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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