CHAPTER I. 



POULTRY FARMING AND WHAT IT MEANS. 



Poultry keeping as an industry is so important a subject 

 that at the commencement it is necessary to outline just what is 

 meant by the term " poultry farming." As the term is gener- 

 ally used we think of it as meaning an exclusive business, as fruit 

 growing or grain farming; with this idea of the subject before us 

 the outlook is not always the brightest. 



Does it pay? — The general belief is that poultry farming does 

 not pay, and this is only too true in many cases when the term is 

 applied in the sense outlined above. There is no branch of animal 

 husbandry in which so many experimental starts have been made 

 and which have resulted in total ruin as in poultry farming. This 

 is probably due to at least two causes: (1) Beginning with too 

 large an Investment of capital and stock which requires an immense 

 amount of energy and money to keep running; or (2) in many 

 cases the business has been ruined at the outset by the inexperi- 

 ence of the promoters who were made to believe, by misleading 

 statements and fascinating statistics, that poultry keeping is the 

 quickest road to a large fortune. While there are many large, 

 exclusive poultry farms which are paying good dividends, and 

 this number is constantly on the increase, yet the true meaning 

 of the term poultry farming does not lie in this phase of the work. 



How, then, is the greatest chance of success to be attained? 

 It is by considering poultry keeping as a branch of the farmer's 

 operations and making it one of the many departments of his 

 work. Such a combination brings him continuous profit and pleas- 

 ure. The large, exclusive poultry plants should be left to those 

 who have had years of experience in the care and management of 

 birds as well as the sale and marketing of the products. By start- 

 ing the business as a branch of general farming, experience will 

 come as the work goes on, and a careful and systematic increase 

 in the size and production of the plant can be arranged so that the 

 poultry keeper can measure his capacity for large things as the 

 increase accumulates. It is with this thought in view that the sub- 

 ject of poultry farming is approached, the object being to show 

 farmers and amateur poultry keepers that in poultry keeping there 



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