622 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



fast-growing stock is what the market poultry raiser wants. There is 

 money in raising strictly fancy poultry, but not for all of us, since we 

 have not the capital, nor the help that is required. Ninety-nine in every 

 hundred will find more profit in producing good market stock and eggs. 

 Do not forget the eggs. Breed for eggs, and sell your surplus stock. 



My advice to beginners is to leave the production of strictly fancy 

 stock to the other fellow and go after the immediate dollar by raising 

 good stock and producing eggs. Poultry and eggs, even the commercial 

 articles, are going higher in price year after year, and choice poultry 

 and fresh eggs for the table are becoming almost a luxury, and there is 

 no good argument why it should not be a good, paying business. 



By producing stock and eggs you have something to sell for cash that 

 is increasingly growing in demand every day. You put it into the mar- 

 ket as soon as it is fit and get the money in your pocket. 



Get good stock of some breed, and stick to it. A flock of chickens all 

 one color looks 50 per cent better than a flock of all kinds and colors, 

 and it costs no more to keep them. Breed from your very best market 

 stocks and best layers, and keep your stock up to the top notch. Feed 

 well, and make your birds comfortable and you will surely reap a profit- 

 able income from this branch of poultry culture. 



The prices paid for fancy poultry ate almost beyond the belief of the 

 average farmer. When Mr. Northup, of New York, received one thousand 

 dollars for a Black Minorca we thought he had climbed to the top of the 

 ladder in chicken perfection, but since then we have learned that instead 

 of being at the top he had only ascended a few rounds, and was distanced 

 by Mr. Kellerstrass, of St. Louis, who sold a pen of White Orpingtons for 

 the neat and attractive sum of seven thousand five hundred dollars — the 

 price of a small Iowa farm. 



But only a fevv- breeders are skillful enough to obtain such prices, if 

 they do have as good birds. These figures are only given to show what 

 is possible with poultry — but remember, it takes money and time to bring 

 a flock to this point. 



The farmer has greater facilities for profitable poultry keeping than the 

 city or town man. A field, or a small lot, adjoining the poultry house, can 

 be sown to wheat, barley and oats, and as soon as it is ripe the young 

 chickens can be turned into the field, and they will save the farmer the 

 trouble of harvesting the crop or feeding the chicks. Late in the fall, if 

 he will sow this same field to rye, it will furnish the chickens green feed 

 until cold, freezing weather. Then, in the spring, your hens are out on 

 your field of rye securing green feed, which they need for best results. 



One of the important items in profitable poultry is how to get eggs in 

 winter, or how to induce the hens to lay when eggs are worth so much 

 money. This is a very easy thing to accomplish, if we are willing to give 

 the proper care. Hens that are noted egg-producers transmit this desired 

 quality to their offspring. It therefore follows that if we want a good 

 laying strain, we must either build one of our own or buy one. If we have 

 hens that have a record for winter egg production, and give them the 



