1905.] THOROUGHBRED POULTRY VERSUS MONGRELS. I5I 



in clean fountains, giving depth enough for them to wash their 

 nostrils, but not room enough to get in all over. We drop the 

 egg, and work in a little middlings, meal, and beef after the 

 first week. After the third week, drop the oats, and cut down 

 the crumbs, and feed bran, middlings, and meal with about 5 

 per cent, beef scraps. The amount of meal and scrap we in- 

 crease gradually, until at 6 or 7 weeks they are getting nearly 

 half meal, and 15 per cent, scrap. At 10 weeks old our ducks 

 will weigh 10 to 12 pounds to the pair when fed on this diet. 



Prices for green ducks range from 15 to 35 cents per 

 pound. The average price for best quality is about 18 cents 

 for the season. It costs 50 to 60 cents to grow a duck to 10 

 weeks age, leaving about 40 cents profit on each duckling 

 computed on average prices for season. 



We use artificial means altogether in producing our market 

 poultry, and, whether you raise 100 or 1,000 or more young- 

 sters a year, it will pay you to give the incubator and brooder 

 a thorough trial. They work when you want them to, and 

 produce early youngsters to catch the high prices. Poultry 

 raising on a large scale is absolutely impossible without their 

 use. 



Geese are profitable to raise where one has pasture to 

 turn them out on. They will require almost no grain food, 

 and are nearly clear profit when marketed at Thanksgiving or 

 Christmas time. 



Turkeys are rather hard to rear, but a sure market awaits 

 the successful grower, and prices average higher every year. 



In marketing all kinds of poultry they should be dry picked 

 to command top prices. Most sections of the country have a 

 more or less coinpetent man who does this work by the piece. 

 We pay 35^ cents each for chicks, and 7 cents each for ducks. 



In producing broilers, I have used eggs from mongrels 

 picked up within a radius of ten miles of our farm, at a price 

 3 cents per dozen above the market price — eggs from Leg- 

 horn crosses on Plymouth Rocks, and on Wyandottes, and eggs 

 from thoroughbred Plymouth Rocks, Wyandottes, and a few- 

 other breeds. 



We have had some fair hatches and produced some Ai 

 broilers from the mongrel eggs. The average quality was not 

 good however. Our grade eggs have done better, and have 

 made good chicks to weigh one pound each at six weeks age. 



