POULTRY. 1043 



the same writer says that he has grown six good crops of corn in 

 six years in his poultry yard, the only fertilizer used being that 

 deposited by the fowls themselves. From an experiment con- 

 ducted on my farm I found that the manure from one hundred 

 and fifty fowls in one year, mixed with nearly a ton each of 

 plaster and road dust, made a quantity of fertilizers that from 

 its effect on the corn and potato crops was pronounced equal in 

 value to two tons of the phosphate, which cost, delivered at our 

 depot, forty dollars per ton. The cost of this home-made ferti- 

 lizer, including price of plaster, labor of collecting dust, etc., 

 was about ten dollars per ton. I believe that in many localities 

 the value of the poultry manure, in addition to the good that 

 a flock of fowls will do by devouring grasshoppers, eggs of in- 

 sects, the grubs of the curculio, etc., will balance the cost of 

 keeping through cold weather. 



Poultry should be kept on the farm if only to supply the 

 farmer's table with an abundance of cheap, fresh meat at times 

 when other meat can not be easily obtained. Poultry and eggs 

 are the cheapest meats that farmers can get, and should appear 

 on their tables oftener than they do. 



As a final reason for keeping fowls on the farm, I would 

 call the attention of farmers to the fact that the surplus poultry 

 and eggs not needed for home consumption can always be ex- 

 changed for cash, or its equivalent. Farmers' wives will appre- 

 ciate this if the men do not, for on many farms ready money is, 

 during the greater part of the year, the scarcest imaginable ar- 

 ticle, and the farmer's wife, who does not have an income from 

 the sale of poultry and eggs or butter, rarely has a dollar to 

 call her own. 



Poultry-keeping for Women. Generally speaking, 

 poultry-keeping pays better than any other money-making occu- 

 pation that comes within the reach of women who live on farms 

 or on small country places, and already there are many women 

 in different parts of the country who are supporting them- 

 selves and their families, wholly or in part, upon the profits de- 

 rived from poultry-keeping. What these women have done, 

 other women can do, if they will; there is no reason why any 



