I suppose profit is to be made by keeping them, or tame rabbits would not be placed in the poulterers’ shops by the side of ducks and chickens, but we are quite at a loss to know how it is accomplished.  It did not much matter in a pecuniary point of view, as it was very doubtful if the children’s pets would ever have died for the benefit of the dinner-table, and I only insert this chapter for the purpose of proving what I stated, viz.; that if a lady wishes her stock of any kind to prosper, she must look after it herself.  When I say prosper, I mean without the expense being double the value of the produce she would receive from her “four-acre farm.”

We did not enter these disasters in our housekeeping book, it went under the title of children’s expenses.  For my own part, I am disposed to think that it must always be expensive to keep live stock of any kind for which all the food has to be purchased.  Had we continued to keep our fowls in the yard, I am convinced they would have brought us little or no profit; but the grass, worms, and other things they found for themselves in the field, half supplied them in food, as well as keeping them healthy.  We had not one death among our poultry from disease in the six months of which I have been relating this experience of our farming.

Our next venture proved more prosperous than the rabbits, and will be related in the following chapter.

CHAPTER IX.

OUR PIGEONS.

After we had been a few months in the country, a friend, who was a great pigeon-fancier, wished to add some new varieties to his cote, and offered to send us, as a present, seven or eight pairs of those he wished to part with.  We were greatly pleased with his offer, and at once set the carpenter at work to prepare a house for them.  As soon as it was ready we received sixteen beautiful pigeons.

For the first fortnight the pigeon-holes were covered with net, that the birds might be enabled to survey at a distance their new abode, and become accustomed to the sight of the persons about the yard.  When the net was removed, they eagerly availed themselves of their freedom to take flights round and round the house.  One couple, of less contented disposition than the others, never came back, nor did we ever hear that they had returned to their old home.  Our number was not, however, lessened by their desertion, for we received, at nearly the same time, from another friend, a pair of beautiful “pouters.”

As we resolved to keep a debtor-and-creditor account of all the things we kept, we found that our eighteen pigeons consumed in every seven weeks.

Two pecks of peas . . . . . . . . . . . $0 75
One peck of tares . . . . . . . . . . .    37
Ditto maize . . . . . . . . . . . . . .    33
$1 45

In the first fourteen weeks we kept them, we received but two pairs of young ones, which were most mercilessly slaughtered for a pie.  The price of these in the market would have been 37 cents per pair, so that we were losers on our stock; but we must say that we did not receive them till nearly the end of September, and we were agreeably surprised at finding we had young ones fit the table at Christmas.