cvi Department of Poultry Husbandry. 



Members of the staff of the Department have spoken at twenty- 

 two meetings in this State during the year. These appointments in- 

 clude several meetings under the auspices of the New York State 

 Department of Agriculture and the agricultural schools at Alfred 

 and Canton. While outside speaking causes considerable interrup- 

 tion, at times, to the regular teaching or investigation work of the 

 Department, nevertheless it is justified in view of its effectiveness 

 in reaching the f>eople of the state face to face. There should be 

 one person in the Department whose chief responsibility will be to 

 meet outside speaking engagements, without, however, excluding 

 other members of the staff from meeting special appointments. 



V. recommendations. 



The Department of Poultry Husbandry needs forty to fifty acres 

 of land for the handling of a poultry enterprise which will be an ob- 

 ject lesson to the people of the state. It should be located adjacent 

 to the teaching center. This is imperative if we are to practice what 

 we teach and if we are to handle our poultry enterprise permanently 

 and successfully. The Department now occupies less than five acres. 



We are handicapped in breeding vigorous poultry as we must 

 keep our breeding flocks in congested quarters on bare yards, where 

 fowls have been kept continuously with no opportunity for puri- 

 fying the land through cropping. We have found that from flocks 

 kept on bare yards we were hatching only forty chickens from a 

 hundred eggs. Soon after the fowls were taken from these yards 

 and placed under free range conditions, the hatching quality rap- 

 idly increased until we were getting seventy chickens from a hun- 

 dred eggs. The difference in the vigor of the chickens hatched un- 

 der these two conditions was more marked even than the hatching 

 power of the eggs. We could not breed our own stock and con- 

 tinue our poultry work without buying new stock each year, if it 

 were not for the few pens we are able to keep on free range. This 

 is wholly inadequate to meet our needs. Moreover, because we are 

 unable to fence in the large number of flocks of chickens in our ex- 

 periments, which are conducted on land not under the jurisdiction 

 of the Department of Poultry Husbandry, we are forced to omit 

 valuable observations and are at a large expense to obtain accurate 

 records. 



We should continue to occupy the present location, using the 

 buildings purely for laboratory purposes for the teaching work, and 

 do all of the investigation work on the land to be provided for the 



