412 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



carried the business out for profit. That is, however, the ideal way to raise 

 poultry, where the family is small and only quality needs to be considered. 

 The expenditure need not be large for a-small beginning. The work at- 

 tending is less, the profit much greater than in the work for market pur- 

 poses only. 



We read that recently G. H. Northup received $1,000 for his Black 

 Minorca cock, "Victor," that U. R. Fishel, of Indiana, sold five of his 

 White Plymouth Rocks for $900. The first prize Buff Plymouth Rock cock- 

 erel at the Boston show sold for $300, while William Ellery Bright the 

 breeder and owner of the first prize Barred Plymouth Rock at the Madison 

 Square Garden show. New York, refused an offer of $300 for him. These 

 figures show the important place that poultry raising is taking in this coun- 

 try. It is interesting men of brains and talents and is fast coming to the 

 front as another branch of animal industry. 



To drop the large figures and come down to those more conceivable, if 

 not more believable, I have been in correspondence for some time with Mrs. 

 Marshall, the Buff Orpington specialist of Missouri, and she is able to tell 

 tales of so fascinating a character as would stir the mind of the most slug- 

 gish. Her cocks sell from $10 to $25, and pullets for corresponding prices. 

 She could not supply the demand for them. This is the artistic and profit- 

 able way to make poultry pay. By careful breeding and judiciously culling, 

 it would take but a few years to establish a breed and a reputation which 

 would prove at once a pleasure and valuable. 



No artist, florist or sculptor could find a better field for his talents or his 

 taste than in the constant, careful training and trimming which produces 

 the perfect form and solid color, with all other points and characteristics, which 

 taken together make up the fowl that scores ninety-six and one-half points. 

 This is ideal, but not visionary. It has been done. What man has done, 

 woman is bound to try to outdo, and in this her eminently proper sphere, 

 she has every chance to succeed. 



But I wish to take up the conditions of poultry raising as I have learned 

 them from observation, study, a little experience and a great many mistakes. 

 The two sources of profit are from the eggs and the marketed poultry. Of 

 these we are probably all agreed that the eggs pay the best for labor, time 

 and feed expended. Given then a breed of hens that will lay all winter, do 

 not sit in the summer, are hardy, early to mature, an excellent table fowl 

 that the surplus CDckerels may be utilized, not unusually subject to disease, 

 and you have your fortune made. 



Of the laying breeds the Leghorns have a fine reputation, but their combs 

 being prominent, easily freeze, and the ordinary chicken house does not 

 enable them to be very good winter layers. The Houdans I found a fine 

 winter layer, a non-sitter, but of rather slow growth and so hardly fit for the 

 table early in the season. The topknot seemed a safe retreat for vermin 

 and rendered the small chicks easily overtaken by hawks. It is not a very 

 pretty creature in wet weather. That good old stand-by, the Plymouth 

 Rock, supplies many of these deficiencies. It is hardy, matures early, g(Jod 

 to eat as to color and flesh, an excellent winter layer. My little flock of 100 

 hens laid forty eggs a day all last January and February, fulfilling all re- 

 quired conditions, and satisfying me for the season as being of royal blood, 

 and good enough for anybody. But there is the adverse side to even these. 



