32 VERMONT AGRICULTURAL REPORT. 



POULTRY MANAGEMENT. 



By Prof. G. M. Gowell. Orono, Me. 



At Lunenburgh, Dec, 1903. 



Many years practical experience in raising and keeping poultry and 

 investigations in poultry breeding have resulted in the accummulation 

 of a considerable fund of information on poultry management. The 

 object of this paper is to outline this experience for the benefit of poul- 

 try keepers, and help them discriminate between some of the wrong 

 theories which have underlain much of the common practice of the 

 past, and the better theories, which underlie other and newer methods 

 that are yielding more satisfactory results. 



The difficulties attending artificial poultry keeping lie in the num- 

 bers of small animals that make up the business. With most domestic 

 animals the care-taker treats each one individually, and there is far less 

 draft on the abilities of the herdsman with his large animals than on 

 the manager of even a small poultry plant with its far greater num- 

 bers of individuals. 



Labor is the costliest factor that enters into the management and 

 equipment of a poultry farm. The cost of food required to produce a 

 pound of beef, pork or chicken does not differ greatly, but while the 

 dressed steer and pig sell for from 5 to 8 cents per pound, the chicken 

 sells for from 15 to 20 cents per pound, and early in the season for much 

 more. The differences in their selling prices represent the differences 

 in the risk and the skill employed in their production. Furthermore, 

 the increasing demand for choice articles of food will tend to main- 

 tain these prices, even though the supply be greatly increased. The 

 products of the poultry farms, the fresh self-sealed eggs, each an un- 

 broken package in itself, and the delicately flavored chickens, are among 

 the choicest articles of food to be found in the markets. 



While poultry raising is exacting in its demands, there are no con- 

 ditions imposed that cannot be compassed by persons of ordinary men- 

 tal and physical capacity. In this as in other callings, the skill which 

 comes from thorough training and the energy needed for persistent 

 work are essential to the fullest success. 



The history of the poultry industry of this country is being rapidly 

 made, these years, on the farms, village lots, and at the experiment sta- 

 tions, and written in the minds of the thousands of earnest workers who 

 are engaged in it. From this accumulated knowledge is to come, in 

 the near future, a better, general understanding of the subject, which 

 will enable men or women of ordinary ability to take up the work for 

 themselves, in a small way, and proceed without making many of the 

 mistakes that caused their predecessors to waste money and labor, 



