92 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



POULTRY ON THE FARM. 



MRS. IIAKKIET WALLACE ASIIBY, R. F. D. XO. 1, DES MOINES, lA. 



I wish to suggest that it would be well for us to look where we are 

 going with farm poultry, the character of our flocks, the care we are 

 giving them and the results obtained, and that we should also look at the 

 financial success won by large plants where poultry keeping is carried on 

 by business men under business methods, and at the work done by our 

 experiment stations. 



When we realize how important a place on the farm can be filled by 

 poultry we will turn our steps to the paths blazed by successful poultry- 

 men, and make as much for our farm poultry as can be made anywhere; 

 in ether words, we will go along the line we are looking. 



There are in America today hundreds of poultry plants where thou- 

 sands of stock birds are annually raised, and where eggs for hatching are 

 produced by tens of thousands. But the aggregate output of these places 

 is as nothing compared to the aggregate output of the farms. Four-fifths 

 of the poultry of the United States comes from the farms. Secretary 

 Wilson estimated last year that we marketed twenty billions of eggs. He 

 is satisfied, however, that we can increase this number by a billion, and 

 as this seems to be an object worth working for he has added a poultry 

 expert to the Department of Animal Husbandry at Washington to con- 

 sider the problems of the hen and how to coax her to lay that extra 

 billion of eggs. 



If farmers want this extra billion of eggs, they can get them, and with- 

 out the aid of a poultry expert. The hen does not require a scientifically 

 compounded ration; we can grow all she needs on the farm; we need 

 only convince the farmer that it is worth while, that the hen will pay a 

 good dividend on her feed and care, and the increased egg yield is assured. 

 The reason the hen is not properly appreciated as a money maker is 

 because the income which she brings in is usually an unknown quantity, 

 as few accounts are kept with the hen. 



On the average farm the income from the poultry is credited either 

 to sundries or other things. Where it is credited to the hens you will 

 find a flock of well cared for poultry, for their owner has found that a 

 flock of fifty hens will bring him in more money than two cows, and at 

 less cost for food and care. 



If Secretary Wilson could persuade the farmers of the United States 

 to keep accounts with their hens, charging them with food and capital 

 invested and crediting them with eggs and poultry marketed; if he could 

 persuade them to feed their hens for one year as they should be fed, and 



