The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Dollar Hen, by Milo M. Hastings This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: The Dollar Hen Author: Milo M. Hastings Release Date: August 22, 2004 [EBook #13254] Language: English Character set encoding: ASCII *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DOLLAR HEN *** Produced by Roger Taft, grandson of Milo Hastings, Jim Tinsley, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. [Transcriber's Note: This printing had more than its share of typographical errors. Obvious typos, like "tim" for "time", have been corrected.] THE DOLLAR HEN BY MILO M. HASTINGS FORMERLY POULTRYMAN AT KANSAS EXPERIMENT STATION; LATER IN CHARGE OF THE COMMERCIAL POULTRY INVESTIGATION OF THE UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE SYRACUSE NATIONAL POULTRY MAGAZINE 1911 COPYRIGHT, 1911, BY NATIONAL POULTRY PUBLISHING COMPANY WHY THIS BOOK WAS WRITTEN Twenty-five years ago there were in print hundreds of complete treatises on human diseases and the practice of medicine. Notwithstanding the size of the book-shelves or the high standing of the authorities, one might have read the entire medical library of that day and still have remained in ignorance of the fact that out-door life is a better cure for consumption than the contents of a drug store. The medical professor of 1885 may have gone prematurely to his grave because of ignorance of facts which are to-day the property of every intelligent man. There are to-day on the book-shelves of agricultural colleges and public libraries, scores of complete works on "Poultry" and hundreds of minor writings on various phases of the industry. Let the would-be poultryman master this entire collection of literature and he is still in ignorance of facts and principles, a knowledge of which in better developed industries would be considered prime necessities for carrying on the business. As a concrete illustration of the above statement, I want to point to a young man, intelligent, enterprising, industrious, and a graduate of the best known agricultural college poultry course in the country. This lad invested some $18,000 of his own and his friends' money in a poultry plant. The plant was built and the business conducted in accordance with the plans and principles of the recognized poultry authorities. To-day the young man is bravely facing the proposition of working on a salary in another business, to pay back the debts of honor resulting from his attempt to apply in practice the teaching of our agricultural colleges and our poultry bookshelves. The experience just related did not prove disastrous from some single item of ignorance or oversight; the difficulty was that the cost of growing and marketing the product amounted to more than the receipts from its sale. This poultry farm, like the surgeon's operation, "was successful, but the patient died." The writer's belief in the reality of the situation as above portrayed warrants him in publishing the present volume. Whether his criticism of poultry literature is founded on fact or fancy may, five years after the copyright date of this book, be told by any unbiased observer. I have written this book for the purpose of assisting in placing the poultry business on a sound scientific and economic basis. The book does not pretend to be a complete encyclopedia of information concerning poultry, but treats only of those phases of poultry production and marketing upon which the financial success of the business depends. The reader who is looking for information concerning fancy breeds, poultry shows, patent processes, patent foods, or patent methods, will be disappointed, for the object of this book is to help the poultryman to make money, not to spend it. HOW TO READ THIS BOOK Unless the reader has picked up this volume out of idle curiosity, he will be one of the following individuals: 1. A farmer or would-be farmer, who is interested in poultry production as a portion of the work of general farming. 2. A poultryman or would-be poultryman, who wishes to make a business of producing poultry or eggs for sale as a food product or as breeding stock. 3. A person interested in poultry as a diversion and who enjoys losing a dollar on his chickens almost as well as earning one. 4. A man interested in poultry in the capacity of an editor, teacher or some one engaged as a manufacturer or dealer in merchandise the sale of which is dependent upon the welfare of the poultry industry. To the reader of the fourth class I have no suggestions to make save such as he will find in the suggestions made to others. To the reader of the third class I wish to say that if you are a shoe salesman, who has spent your evenings in a Brooklyn flat, drawing up plans for a poultry plant, I have only to apologize for any interference that this book may cause with your highly fascinating amusement. To the poultryman already in the business, or to the man who is planning to engage in the business for reasons equivalent to those which would justify his entering other occupations of the semi-technical class, such as dairying, fruit growing or the manufacture of washing machines, I wish to say it is for you that "The Dollar Hen" is primarily written. This book does not assume you to be a graduate of a technical school, but it does bring up discussions and use methods of illustration that may be unfamiliar to many readers. That such matter is introduced is because the subject requires it; and if it is confusing to the student he will do better to master it than to dodge it. Especially would I call your attention to the diagrams used in illustrating various statistics. Such diagrams are technically called "curves." They may at first seem mere crooked lines, if so I suggest that you get a series of figures in which you are interested, such as the daily egg yields of your own flock or your monthly food bills, and "plot" a few curves of your own. After you catch on you will be surprised at the greater ease with which the true meaning of a series of figures can be recognized when this graphic method is used. I wish to call the farmer's attention to the fact that poultry keeping as an adjunct to general farming, especially to general farming in the Mississippi Valley, is quite a different proposition from poultry production as a regular business. Poultry keeping as a part of farm life and farm enterprise is a thing well worth while in any section of the United States, whereas poultry keeping, a separate occupation, requires special location and special conditions to make it profitable. I would suggest the farmer first read Chapter XVI, which is devoted to his special conditions. Later he may read the remainder of the book, but should again consult the part on farm poultry production before attempting to apply the more complicated methods to his own needs. Chapter XVI, while written primarily for the farmer, is, because of the simplicity of its directions, the best general guide for the beginner in poultry keeping wherever he may be. To the reader in general, I want to say, that the table of contents, a part of the book which most people never read, is in this volume so placed and so arranged that it cannot well be avoided. Read it before you begin the rest of the book, and use it then and thereafter in guiding you toward the facts that you at the time particularly want to know. Many people in starting to read a book find something in the first chapter which does not interest them and cast aside the work, often missing just the information they are seeking. The conspicuous arrangement of the contents is for the purpose of preventing such an occurrence in this case. WHAT IS IN THIS VOLUME CHAPTER I IS THERE MONEY IN THE POULTRY BUSINESS? A Big Business; Growing Bigger Less Ham and More Eggs Who Gets the Hen Money? CHAPTER II WHAT BRANCH OF THE POULTRY BUSINESS? Various Poultry Products The Duck Business Squabs Have Been Overdone Turkeys not Adapted to Commercial Growing Guinea Growing a New Venture Geese, the Fame of Watertown The Ill-omened Broiler Business South Shore Roasters Too Much Competition in Fancy Poultry Egg Farming the Most Certain and Profitable CHAPTER III THE POULTRY PRODUCING COMMUNITY Established Poultry Communities Developing Poultry Communities Will Co-operation Work? Co-operative Egg Marketing in Denmark Corporation or Co-operation CHAPTER IV WHERE TO LOCATE Some Poultry Geography Chicken Climate Suitable Soil Marketing—Transportation Availability of Water A Few Statistics CHAPTER V THE DOLLAR HEN FARM The Plan of Housing The Feeding System Water Systems Out-door Accommodations Equipment for Chick Rearing Twenty-five Acre Poultry Farms Five Acre Poultry Farms CHAPTER VI INCUBATION Fertility of Eggs The Wisdom of the Egyptians Principles of Incubation Moisture and Evaporation Ventilation—Carbon Dioxide Turning Eggs Cooling Eggs Searching for the "Open Sesame" of Incubation The Box Type of Incubator in Actual Use The Future of Incubation CHAPTER VII FEEDING Conventional Food Chemistry How the Hen Unbalances Balanced Rations CHAPTER VIII DISEASES Don't Doctor Chickens The Causes of Poultry Diseases Chicken Cholera Roup Chicken-pox, Gapes, Limber-neck Lice and Mites CHAPTER IX POULTRY FLESH AND POULTRY FATTENING Crate Fattening Caponizing CHAPTER X MARKETING POULTRY CARCASSES Farm Grown Chickens The Special Poultry Plant Suggestions From Other Countries Cold Storage of Poultry Drawn or Undrawn Fowls Poultry Inspection CHAPTER XI QUALITY IN EGGS Grading Eggs How Eggs are Spoiled Egg Size Table The Loss Due to Carelessness Requisites of Producing High Grade Eggs CHAPTER XII HOW EGGS ARE MARKETED The Country Merchant The Huckster The Produce Buyer The City Distribution of Eggs Cold Storage of Eggs Preserving Eggs Out of Cold Storage Improved Methods of Marketing Farm-Grown Eggs The High Grade Egg Business Buying Eggs by Weight The Retailing of Eggs by the Producer The Price of Eggs N.Y. Mercantile Exchange, Official Quotations CHAPTER XIII BREEDS OF CHICKENS Breed Tests The Hen's Ancestors What Breed? CHAPTER XIV PRACTICAL AND SCIENTIFIC BREEDING Breeding as an Art Scientific Theories of Breeding Breeding for Egg Production CHAPTER XV EXPERIMENT STATION WORK The Stations Leading in Poultry Work The Story of the "Big Coon" Important Experimental Results at the Illinois Station Experimental Bias The Egg Breeding Work at the Maine Station CHAPTER XVI POULTRY ON THE GENERAL FARM Best Breeds for the Farm Keep Only Workers Hatching Chicks with Hens Incubators on the Farm Rearing Chicks Feeding Laying Hens Cleanliness Farm Chicken Houses THE DOLLAR HEN CHAPTER I IS THERE MONEY IN THE POULTRY BUSINESS? The chicken business is big. No one knows how big it is and no one can find out. The reason it is hard to find out is because so many people are engaged in it and because the chicken crop is sold, not once a year, but a hundred times a year. Statistics are guesses. True statistics are the sum of little guesses, but often figures published as statistics are big guesses by a guesser who is big enough to have his guess accepted. A Big Business; Growing Bigger The only real statistics for the poultry crop of the United States are those of the Federal Census. At this writing these statistics are nine years old and somewhat out of date. The value of poultry and eggs in 1899, according to the census figures, was $291,000,000. Is this too big or too little? I don't know. If the reader wishes to know let him imagine the census enumerator asking a farmer the value of the poultry and eggs which he has produced the previous year. Would the farmer's guess be too big or too small? From these census figures as a base, estimates have been made for later years. The Secretary of Agriculture, or, speaking more accurately, a clerk in the Statistical Bureau of the Department of Agriculture, says the poultry and egg crop for 1907 was over $600,000,000. The best two sources of information known to the writer by which this estimate may be checked are the receipts of the New York market and the annual "Value of Poultry and Eggs Sold," as given by the Kansas State Board of Agriculture. In plate I the top curve a-a gives the average spring price of Western first eggs in the New York market. The curve b-b gives the annual receipts of eggs at New York in millions of cases. Now, since value equals quantity multiplied by price, and since the quantity and values of poultry are closely correlated to those of eggs, the product of these two figures is a fair means of showing the rate of increase in the value of the poultry crop. Starting with the census value of $291,000,000 for the year 1899, we thus find that by 1907 the amount is very close to $700,000,000. This is represented by the lower line. The value of the poultry and eggs sold in Kansas have increased as follows: Year Value 1903 $ 6,498,856 1904 7,551,871 1905 8,541,153 1906 9,085,896 1907 10,300,082 The dotted line e-e represents the increase in the national poultry and egg crop estimated from the Kansas figures. Evidently the estimate given in Secretary Wilson's report was not excessive. Now, I want to call the reader's attention to some relations about which there can be no doubt and which are even more significant. The straight line c-c in Plate 1 represents the rate of increase of population in this country. The line b-b represents the rate of increase in egg receipts at New York. As the country data backs up the New York figures, the conclusion is inevitable that the production of poultry and eggs is increasing much more rapidly than is our population. "Over-production," I hear the pessimist cry, but unfortunately for Friend Pessimist, we have a gauge on the over-production idea that lays all fears to rest. When the supply of any commodity increases faster than the demand, we have over-production and falling prices. Vice-versa, under-production is shown by a rising price. That prices of poultry and eggs have risen and risen rapidly, has already been shown. "But prices of all products have risen," says one. Very true, but by statistics with which I will not burden the reader, I find that prices of poultry products have risen more rapidly than the average rise in values of all commodities. This shows that poultry products are really more in demand and more valuable, not apparently so. Moreover, the rise in the price of poultry products has been much more pronounced than the average rise in the price of all food products, which proves the growing demand for poultry and eggs to be a real growing demand, not a turning to poultry products because of the high price of other foods, as is sometimes stated. Less Ham and More Eggs. Certainly we, as a nation, are rapidly becoming eaters of hens and of hen fruit. Reasons are not hard to find. Poultry and eggs are the most palatable, most wholesome, most convenient of foods. Our demands for the products of the poultry yard grows because we are learning to like them, and because our prosperity has grown and we can afford them. Another reason that the consumption of eggs is growing is because the condition in which they reach the consumer is improving. The writer may say some pretty hard things in this work about the condition of poultry and eggs as they are now marketed, but any old- timer in the business will tell you stories of things as they used to be that will easily explain why our fathers ate more ham and less eggs. Yet another reason why the per capita consumption of hens as measured in pounds or dollars increases, is that the hen herself has increased in size; whereas John when he was Johnnie ate a two-ounce drumstick, now Johnnie eats an analogous piece that weighs three ounces. Perhaps, also, we have a growing respect for the law of Moses, or may be vegetarians who think that eggs grow on egg plants are becoming more numerous. Our consumption of pork per capita has, in the last half century, diminished by half, our consumption of beef has remained stationary, but our consumption of poultry and eggs has doubled itself, we know not how many times, for a half century ago the ancestor of the industrious hen of this age serenely scratched up grandmother's geraniums and was unmolested by the statisticians. Who Gets the Hen Money? Seven hundred millions of dollars is a lot of money. Who gets it? There are no Rockefellers or Armours in the hen business. It is the people's business. Why? Because the nature of the business is such that it cannot be centralized. Land and intelligent labor, prompted by the spirit of ownership, is necessary to succeed in the hen business. Land the captains of industry have not monopolized, and labor imbued with the spirit of ownership they cannot monopolize. The chicken business is, in dollars, one of the biggest industries in the country. In numbers of those engaged in it, the chicken business is the biggest industry in the world—I bar none. Why is this true? Primarily because the hen is a natural part of the equipment of every farm and of many village homes as well. It is these millions of small flocks that count up in dollars and men and give such an immense aggregate. More than ninety-eight per cent. of the poultry and eggs of the country are produced on the general farm. The remaining one or two per cent. are produced on farms or plants where chicken culture is the cash crop or chief business of the farmer. It is this business, relatively small, though actually a matter of millions, that is commonly spoken of as the poultry business, and about which our chief interest centers. A farmer can disregard all knowledge and all progress and still keep chickens, but the man who has no other means of a livelihood must produce chicken products efficiently, or fail altogether—hence the greater interest in this portion of the industry. The poultry business as a business to occupy a man's time and earn him a livelihood, is a thing of recent origin and was little heard of before 1890. Since that time it has undergone a somewhat painful, though steady growth. Many people have lost money in the business and have given it up in disgust, but on a whole the business has progressed wonderfully, and now shows features of development that are clearly beyond the experimental stage and are undoubtedly here to stay. The suggestion has been made by those who have failed or have seen others fail in the poultry business, that success was impossible because of the destructive competition of the farmer, whose expense of production is small. Herein lies a great truth and a great error. The farmer's cost of production is small, much smaller than that on most of the book-made poultry farms—but the inference that the poultryman's cost of production cannot be lowered below that of the farmer is a different statement. The farm of our grandfather was a very diversified institution. It contained in miniature a woolen mill, a packing house, a cheese factory, perhaps a shoe factory and a blacksmith shop. One by one these industries have been withdrawn from general farm-life, and established as independent businesses. Likewise our dairy farms, our fruit farms, and our market gardens have been segregated from the general farm. This simply means that manufacturing cloth, or cheese, or producing milk, or tomatoes can be done at less cost in separate establishments than upon a general farm. The general farm will always grow poultry for home consumption, and will always have some surplus to sell. With the surplus, the poultryman must compete. His only hope of successful competition is production at lower cost. Can this be done? It is being done, and the numbers of people who are doing it are increasing, but they spend little money at poultry shows, or with the advertisers of poultry papers, and hence are little heard of in the poultry world. The people whose names and faces are in the poultry papers are frequently there only while their money lasts. They write long articles and show pictures of many houses and yards to prove that there is money in the poultry business, but if one should keep their names and put the question to them five years hence, a great many could say, "Yes, there is money in the poultry business; mine is in it." Such people and such plants do not get the cost of production down below the farmer's level. Between these two classes of poultry plants, the writer hopes in this work to show the distinction. CHAPTER II WHAT BRANCH OF THE POULTRY BUSINESS? The chicken business is especially prone to failure from a disregard of the common essential relation of cost and selling price necessary to the success of any business. That this should be more true of the poultry business than of any other undertakings is to be explained by the facts that as a business, it is new, that many of those who engage in it are inexperienced, but most particularly because practically all the literature published on the subject has been written by or written in the interest of those who had something to sell to the poultryman. As a result the figures of production are generally given higher than the facts warrant. The investor, be he ever so shrewd a man, builds upon these promises and when he finds his production lower, is caught with an excessive investment and a complicated system on his hands, which make all profits impossible and which cannot readily be adapted to the new conditions. Estimates of poultry profits are quite common, but there are few published figures showing the results that are actually obtained under practical working conditions. In this volume I will try to give the facts of what is being and can be actually accomplished. Various Poultry Products. In considering the poultry industry we must first get some idea of the various articles produced for sale. It is common knowledge that the large meat packer can undersell the small packer because the by-products, such as bristles, which are wasted by the local killer, are a source of income to the large packer. Now, this does not infer that the small packer is shiftless and neglects to save his bristles, but that on the scale on which he operates it would cost him more to save the bristles than he could realize on them. So it is with poultry farming. For illustration: A visionary writer in a leading poultry paper, not long ago, advised poultrymen to store eggs. In reality this would be the height of folly, unless the poultryman had his own retail store. In the first place profit on cold storage eggs, when all expenses are paid, will not average a half a cent a dozen; in the second place, the small lot would be relatively troublesome and expensive to handle, and in the third place, small lots of cold storage eggs are looked upon with suspicion and do not find ready sale. So we see that cold storage eggs are not a suitable product for the small poultryman to handle. A second illustration of an ill-chosen combination might be taken in the case of a duck farmer who attempts to produce broilers. The principal difficulty of the duck business is that of getting sufficient intelligent labor in the rush season. The chief expense of investment is for incubators and brooder houses. If the duck farmer now tries to add broilers, he will find that the labor comes at the same time of the year, that the chief equipment required is that which is already crowded by the duck business, and that of the men who have succeeded moderately well in caring for ducks will fail altogether with the young chicks, which do not thrive under the same machine- like methods. On the other hand, let us take the example of an egg farm man who has resolved to combine his attention wholly to the production of market eggs. He succeeds well in his work and is visited by the poultry editors. His picture, the picture of his chickens and of his chicken houses, are printed in the poultry papers. For a reasonable sum invested in advertising and in exhibition at the shows, this man could now double his income by going into the breeding stock business. To refuse to spread out in this case would certainly be foolish. The following classification of the sales products of the poultry industry is given as a basis for farther consideration. CHICKENS. For food purposes: Eggs. Hens, after laying has been finished. Cockerels, necessarily hatched in hatching pullets for layers. (Sold as squab broilers, regular broilers, springs, roasters or capons.) Both sexes as squab broilers, broilers or roasters. For stock purposes: Eggs for hatching. Day-old chicks. Mature fowls. DUCKS. For table—green or spring ducks. By-products, old ducks and duck feathers. For breeding-stock. GEESE. Food, Feathers, Breeders. TURKEYS. Food, Breeders. PIGEONS. Squabs, Breeding Stock. GUINEAS. Broilers, Mature Fowls. I will now discuss these products more in detail. Poultry, other than chickens, I do not care to discuss at length, because it is not for the purpose of the book, and because the demand for other kinds of poultry is limited and the chance for the growth of the business small. The Duck Business. The duck business is the most highly commercialized at the present time of any branch of the poultry business. The duck is the oldest domestic bird and was hatched by artificial incubation in China, when our ancestors were gnawing raw bones in the caves of Europe. The duck is the most domestic of birds and will thrive under more machine-like methods and without that touch of nature and of the owner's kindly interest so necessary to the welfare of the fowls of the gallinaceous order. The green duck business is about twenty years old and has become an established business in every sense of the word. The largest plants now produce about one hundred thousand ducks per annum. The profits at present are not large even for the most successful plants, because the demand is limited and the production has reached such a point that cost of production and selling price bear a definite relation as in all established businesses. The green duck business is not an easy one for the novice because the margin between cost (chiefly food cost) and selling price is low, and unless the new man can reduce the cost of production or raise his selling price in some way, he will have no advantage over the old and successful firms. Squab Business Overdone. The business of producing pigeon squabs resembles the duck business in the sense that it has been reduced to a successful system. The production of squabs has grown until the demand is satisfied and the price has fallen to just that figure that will continue to bring in a sufficient number of squabs from the plants which are already established, or which continue to be established by those who do not stop to investigate the relation between the cost of production and the prevailing prices. Turkeys Not a Commercial Success. In the case of turkeys, we find exactly opposite conditions. The price of turkeys has risen with the price of chickens and eggs, until one would think that there would be great money in the business, and there is, for the motherly farm wife who has the knack of bringing the little turks through the danger of delicate babyhood. But just as the duck is more domesticated than the chicken, so the turkey, which yet closely resembles its wild ancestor, is less domestic and has as yet failed to surrender to the ways of commercial reasoning, the chief factor of which is artificial brooding. The presence of a disease called blackhead has done vast injury to the turkey industry in the northeastern section of the country. In the South the industry has been booming. Especially in Tennessee and Texas, I found great local pride in the turkey crop. I certainly would advise any farm wife, in sections where blackhead does not prevail, to try her hand at turkey raising. As to her advisability of continuance in the business, the number of turkeys at the end of the season will be the best judge. Guinea Growing a New Venture. The guinea growing business is the newest of the poultry industries. In fact, it may be said of guineas, as of our grandmother's tomatoes, "Folks had them around without knowing they were of any use." The new use for guineas is as a substitute for game. Guinea broilers make quail-on-toast and older ones are good for grouse, prairie chicken or pheasant. The retail price in the large cities runs as high as $1.50 to $2.00 a pair. It will probably not pay to raise them unless one is sure of receiving as much as 50 cents each. As for the rearing of guineas, they may be considered on a parallel case with turkeys, if anything they are even more difficult to raise in large quantities. I would also advise this additional precaution: Look up the market in the locality before attempting guinea rearing. Geese—the Fame of Watertown. As for the goose business, the writer must admit that he doesn't know much about it. In fact, the most of my knowledge concerning this business was acquired by a visit to Watertown, Wis., which is the center of the noodled goose industry The Watertown geese are fed by hand every two hours day and night. They sell to the Hebrew trade at as much per pound as the goose weighs, and have brought as high as $14.00 apiece. All of this is interesting, but I hold that the reader who is willing to take instruction will do better to be guided toward those branches of the poultry industry for the products of which there is a great and increasing demand. So we will leave the goose and guinea business to the venturesome spirits and consider the various branches of the chicken industry. The Ill-omened Broiler Business. The broiler business stands to-day as the ill-omened valley in the poultry landscape. As a rule broiler production has not and probably will not pay. I know of a few exceptions—about enough to prove the rule. Most poultry writers, when they make the statement that broilers do not pay, insert the phrase "As an exclusive business" after the word broilers. This is merely a ruse to take the rough edge off an unpleasant statement, for it certainly hurts the poultry editor to admit that a much exploited branch of the industry is a failure. Nevertheless it is a failure and the more frankly we admit the fact, the less good capital and good brains will be wasted in the attempt to produce at a profit something which is, and probably always will be, produced at a loss. The reason the broiler is produced at a loss is that 95 per cent. of the broilers produced are a by-product of egg, fancy and general poultry production, and as such their selling price is not determined by the cost of production, or the supply determined by the demand. That the broiler business received the boom that it did, is due to plain ignorance of the cost of production, or to the appreciation that the ability to rear young chicks could find a more profitable outlet than in broiler production. Let us take an analogous case. Suppose a city man should discover the fact that there was a demand for dried casein from skim milk. With pencil and paper he could easily figure profits in the business. If this dreamer would attempt to keep cows for the production of casein and throw away his butter fat, we would have an analogous case to the broiler raiser who does not keep his pullets for egg production. The young cockerel, like skim milk, is a by-product and may pay over the cost of feeding, or some other specific item, but that he does not pay the whole cost, including wages for the manager is proven by two facts: First, every large broiler plant yet started has either failed flatly or shifted its main line to other things; second, egg farmers would be only too glad to buy pullets at the price for which they sell the cockerels—a confession that it costs more to produce broilers than they will bring. The conception of the broiler business when it was boomed twenty years ago was to produce broilers in early spring, when other folks had none. It was, like the early watermelon, or the early strawberry business—to make its profits in extreme prices. This idea received several severe blows from the hands of modern progress. One is the development of poultry fattening and crate feeding in this country. This has resulted in supplying the consumer with choice chicken-flesh that can be produced more economically than broilers. Formerly it was a case of eating old hen—rooster, age unknown, or broilers—now we have capon, roaster, crate- fattened chickens and green ducks, all rivals for the place formerly occupied exclusively by the broiler. Again, the improvement of shipping and dressing facilities, the universal introduction of the refrigerator car and the introduction into the central west of the American breeds, has flooded the eastern market with a large amount of spring chickens—by-products of the egg business on the farm—which are almost equal in quality to the down-eastern product. The most prominent reason of the lessened profit in broilers is the development of the cold storage industry. Cold storage destroys the element of season, and allows only that margin of profit that the consumer is willing to pay for a fresh killed broiler from a Jersey broiler plant, as compared with last summer's product from the Iowa farms. From a summer copy of Farm Poultry, I quote the Boston market: Fresh killed Northern and Eastern: Fowls, choice 15c Broilers, choice to fancy 23-25c Western, ice packed: Fowls, choice 14c Broilers, choice 20-22c Western frozen: Fowls, choice 14c Broilers, choice 18-20c Eggs: Nearly fancy 26c Western choice 17-1/2--18-1/2c To complete our comparison I turn to the previous winter and find that the best storage eggs are quoted at 19c, when the best fresh are selling at 35c. This was a poor storage season and a quotation of 22c and 25c would perhaps be a fairer comparative figure. We find the per cent. of premium on the local product to be: Fowls, local over fresh western 7 per cent. Fowls, local over frozen western 7 per cent. Broilers, local over fresh western 14 per cent. Broilers, local over frozen western 26 per cent. Eggs, local over fresh western 30 per cent. Eggs, local over storage western 37 per cent. I consider these general facts concerning the failure of broiler production, and the logical explanations given, as far more convincing than any figures I could give concerning the detailed cost of production. Nor am I capable of giving as accurate figures as I can in the case of poultry keeping for egg production, for I have had neither the desire nor the opportunity to look them up. The following suggestive analysis I submit for the purpose of pointing out why the cost of production is too great to allow a profit. We may consider the chick marketing as May, the weight as 1-1/4, and the price as 35 cents a pound, or, putting it roundly a price of 50 cents a bird. Now, May broilers mean February eggs. If the reader will refer to the tables of hatchability and mortality he will see that for our northern states this is one of the worst seasons for hatching. A hatchability of 40 per cent. times a liveability of 50 per cent. gives a net liveability of 20 per cent. Now, anyone with the ability to produce high grade eggs at that time a year, could get about 40c a dozen for them, which raises the egg cost per broiler to about 17 cents. The feed cost per broiler is small, usually estimated at 12 cents, and this makes a cost of 29 cents. Now, let us allow a cent for expense of selling charges and forget all about investment, fuel and incidentals, we have left a margin of 20 cents. Before going farther let us look at the labor bill. Suppose it is a one-man plant. Suppose the owner sets a value on his services of $1,200 per annum. That is pretty good, but few men who set a lower value on their services will have accumulated enough capital to go into the business. At 20 cents each it will take 6,000 broilers to make $1,200. That will take 30,000 eggs and at three settings will require 40 240-egg incubators, which, of a good make, will cost $1,260. To spread the hatching out over a longer period is to run into cheap prices on the one hand, or a still impossible egg season on the other. It will take upwards of a hundred brooders to house the chicks. There is no use of going farther till we have solved these difficulties. First we have more work than one man can do; second, we require a number of hatchable eggs that cannot be bought in winter without a campaign of advertising and canvassing for them, that would make them cost double our previous figure. To produce them oneself would require a flock of 2,500 hens. When a man gets to that point in the business he is out of the broiler business and an egg farmer, and will do the same thing, hatch the chicks when eggs are cheap and fertile, selling his surplus cockerels for 25 cents each and permit the storage man to freeze them until the following spring to compete with the broiler man's expensively produced goods. The effort at early broiler production was a natural result of the combination of the idea of artificial incubation with our grandmother's pride in having the first setting hen. But in the present age the man who attempts it is rowing against the current of economical production, for the cheaply produced broiler can be stored until the season of scarcity, with but slight loss in quality. To produce broilers in the season of scarcity, necessitates the consumption of a product (eggs) which cannot be so successfully stored, with a lesser quantity of that same product in its season of plenty. We will give the production of broilers no further attention save as a by-product of egg production. South Shore Roaster. The production of South Shore soft roasters in a local section of Massachusetts, offers a successful contrast with the broiler business and is, so far as the writer knows, the only case in the United States where pullets are profitably diverted from egg production. The process of roaster production is essentially as follows: The incubators are set in the fall or early winter, and the chicks reared in brooder houses. As soon as the tender age is past, the chickens are put in simple colony houses where, with hopper fed corn, beef scrap and rye on the range, they grow throughout the winter and spring. They are sold from May 1st to July 1st and bring such prices that the cockerels are caponized yet not sold as capons, showing them to be the highest priced chicken flesh in the market save small broilers. Now, the income of roasters is two to five times as much per head as that of broilers. The added expense is only a matter of feed, which bears about the same ratio to weight as with broilers. The great advantage of the roaster business over that of the broiler business comes in the following points: 1st: The initial expense of eggs, incubation and brooding are distributed over a much larger final valuation. 2nd: The incubation period, while perhaps in as difficult a season, can be distributed over a longer period of time. With 8 pound roasters at 30 cents, we have an expense account about as follows: cost of production to broiler stage, 30 cents as previously given. An additional food cost of 10 cents per pound of chicken flesh would still leave a margin of $1.40, so, for an income of $1,200, only about 860 birds need be raised, a proposition not beyond the capacity of one man to handle. Allowing a spread of five hatching periods, the number of eggs required at once would be one-twelfth that demanded by the broiler farm. As it is, the roaster grower finds trouble in getting good eggs and is obliged to pay 50 cents a dozen for them, but his want is within the region of possibility. The South Shore roaster district is an example of an industry built up by specialization and co-operation. But in this sense I do not mean co-operation in production, but that the product is handled by a few dealers and has become well known so that the brand sells readily at an advanced price. To a beginner in the South Shore district, the numerous successes and failures around him cannot help but be of great benefit. The South Shore roaster district of Massachusetts is the best example of specialized community production of poultry flesh that we have in the United States. It is only rivaled by the districts in the south of England and in France. In Chapter III the writer takes up fully the community production of eggs. The reason I have gone into this matter in regard to eggs rather than roasters, is because the egg production is much the greater industry, and, whereas the soft roaster is at a premium only in a few Boston shops, high grade eggs are universally recognized and in demand. Many of the economies, especially concerning incubation, would apply equally well in both communities. I expect to see the time when chicken flesh shall be produced with these more advanced methods in many "South Shore" communities. Too Much Competition in Fancy Poultry. The various types of chicken farming are classified by what is made the leading sales product. This will depend wholly upon what is done with the female chicks that are hatched. If they are sold as broilers it is a broiler plant; if as roasters, it is a roaster plant; if as stock, it is a fancy or breeding stock business, but if kept for laying the proposition is an egg farm, and all other products are by- products. These by-products are to be carefully considered, and sold at the greatest possible price, but their production is incidental to the production of the main crop. Of the fancy poultry business as a main issue it must be said that it is certainly a poor policy to start out to make a living doing what hundreds of other people are only too glad to spend money in doing. Just as a homeless girl in a great city is beaten out in the struggle for existence by competition with girls who have good homes, and are working for chocolate money, so the man starting out as a poultry fancier is certainly working at great odds in competition with the professional men, farmers and poultry raisers whose income from fancy stock is meant to buy Christmas presents and not to pay grocery bills. To enter the fancy poultry business, one should take up poultry breeding in a small way, while working at another occupation, or he may take up commercial poultry production, learn to produce stock in large quantities and at a low productive cost, after which any breeding stock business he may secure will be added profit. The fancier will find the cost of production as given for commercial purposes very instructive, but if he operates in a small way he should expect to find his productive costs increased unless he chooses to count his own labor as of little or no value. That every chicken fancier also has in a small way commercial products to sell, goes without saying. These, indeed, together with his sales of high-priced stock, may pull him through with a total profit, even though his production cost is great, but every fancier should take a pride in making the sales at commercial rates pay for their cost of production. If the reader has received the impression from the present discussion that fancy poultry breeding always proves unprofitable, he certainly has failed to get the key-note of the situation. There are numbers of fancy poultry breeders making incomes of several thousand dollars per year, but these are old breeders and well-known men. There is another type of poultry fancier who is more commercial in his methods, but whose work lacks the personal enthusiasm and artistic touch of the regular fancier. I refer to the band wagon style of breeder who gets out a general catalog in which are pictured acres of poultry yards with fences as straight as the draughtsman's rule can make them. Such men do a big business. They may carry a part or all of the breeding stock on a central poultry plant and farm out the eggs, contracting to buy back the stock in the fall, or the poultry farm may be a myth and the manager may simply sell the product of the neighboring farmers who raise it under contract. The system is naturally disliked by the higher class fanciers, but the writer must confess that any system which gets improved stock distributed among the farmers is worthy of praise. These types of poultry farms have been more largely carried on in the West than in the East, owing to the fact that true fanciers are thicker in the East. There is undoubtedly still plenty of room for band wagon poultry plants in the West and especially in the South. As adjuncts of this business may be mentioned the sale of a line of poultry supplies and the handling of other pet stock, such as dogs or Shetland ponies. In this case the advantage of such additions depends upon the fact that the greatest cost is that of advertising, and, if anything that will be associated in the buyer's mind with the main article be added to the catalog, it will result in additional sales at a low rate of advertising cost. Egg Farming the Most Certain and Profitable. We have now discussed all the branches of the poultry business save that of egg production, and the result of our review indicates that most of these fields are either of limited opportunities or that they present obstacles in the very nature of the work that prevent their being conducted on a large scale. Egg production is undoubtedly the most promising and profitable branch of the poultry industries. The chief reason that this is true is to be found in the fact that the most difficult feature in chicken growing is the rearing of young stock through the brooding period. Now, as the eggs laid by a hen are worth several times the value of her carcass, it stands to reason that once we succeed in rearing pullets, egg farming must be the most profitable business to engage in. For each hen that passes through a laying period there is her own carcass, and at least one cockerel, that are necessarily produced and that must be marketed. Now, the pullet is worth more for egg producing than can be realized for her as a broiler or roaster, and her extra worth may be considered as counter-balancing the price at which cockerels must be sold. The egg crop represents about two-thirds of the value of all poultry products, and the demand for the high grade goods has never been satisfied. Egg farming cannot easily be overdone, whereas any other type of poultry production must compete with the cockerels and hens that are a by-product of egg farming. Egg farming by no means relieves one from the difficulties of incubation and growing young stock, but it does throw these difficult parts of the business at the natural season of the year and results in a distribution of work throughout a longer period of time. In the remainder of the volume we will consider the poultryman as an egg farmer. We will also, unless otherwise stated, assume that he is a White Leghorn egg farmer, who is hatching by artificial incubation. Such reference to the marketing of poultry flesh or to other breeds will be made only in comparison of this type of the business or in relation to the production or handling of farm-grown poultry. CHAPTER III THE POULTRY PRODUCING COMMUNITY The builder of air castles in Poultrydom invariably starts out with a resumé of the specialization of the world's work and the wonderful advances in the economy of production of the large corporate organization, compared with the individual producer. The lone blacksmith hammering out a horseshoe nail is contrasted with the mills of the American Steel Company. The fond dreamer looks upon the steel trust, the oil trust, the department store, the packing house, the chain groceries, the theatrical trust, and the colossal enterprises that dominate every field of industry save agriculture. Here, then, lies the neglected opportunity for the industrial dreamer to hop over the fence, awaken the sleeping farmer, and fill his own purse with the wealth to be made by applying modern business methods to agriculture. The knowing smile—the farmer may be asleep and he may not be. Suppose that he is, does the fond dreamer dream that he is the first man from the industrial kingdom of great things to look with hungry eyes at the rich field of agricultural opportunity, basking in last century's sun? Alas, fond dreamer, your name is legion. Every farmer who has sent a son to college has known you and the Hon. William Jennings Bryan has met you, called you an agriculturist and defined you as a man who makes his money in town and spends it in the country. But the dreamer is right in his first premise—great economies in production are the result of specialization and combination. Why not then in agriculture? I'll tell you why. There is a touch of nature in the living thing that calls for a closer interest on the part of the laborer than the industrial system of the mine and factory can give. Why is combined and specialized production more economical? It may be because it gets more efficient work out of labor, it may be that larger operations make feasible the employment of more efficient methods and machinery. The cost of production may be lowered, by either or both of these means, or it may be lowered by an increased efficiency in machinery, even with a decreased efficiency in labor. Combination and specialization so commonly cut down expenses because of large operations and the use of better tools, that we may take...