1890.] PUBLIC DOCUMENT — No. 4. 247 



than give a fair amount of attention to the all-important 

 questions upon which the industry rests, and must leave the 

 field of fancy stock to the fanciers. 



It is idle for any one to think of adding poultry breeding 

 to the round of daily duties, without subtracting the equiva- 

 lent from other cares. Farm work is exacting. Nothing 

 can be neglected, neither can the farmer divide his attention 

 aliiong too many departments without loss. Better by far 

 confine to one or two lines, and in these seek to excel. No 

 man can succeed in poultry culture, who feeds and waters 

 once a day, cleans out the pens when it rains, collects the 

 eggs after dark, and breeds with no special reference to 

 quality. These are the men who fail in everything. They 

 are the ones who in public, and through the press, declare 

 that the business is a humbug ; that every egg costs a dime, 

 and a pound of poultry is worth a dollar to the grower. 

 This to them is the truth, simply and only because they 

 reach out after and attempt to grasp every branch known to 

 agriculture, and neglect the conditions underlying success. 

 A daily round of little duties makes up the sum total of the 

 labors of the poultry man ; and not one of these can be neg- 

 lected without loss. 



The average price received by the breeders in central 

 Maine this year for eggs will be a fraction less than twenty 

 cents a dozen. Those of you who have put yourselves into 

 the business, and made a market for choice stock, have real- 

 ized thirty cents or more. Why is it that all the farmers do 

 not secure this higher price ? The demand is active, the sup- 

 ply limited. It must be because they fail to observe the 

 conditions. With the fact staring us in the face, that the 

 market is ready to pay thirty cents a dozen for selected eggs, 

 absolutely fresh, from stock fed on sound, healthy grain, 

 the great majority, through neglect, fail to secure or ship 

 their product in quantity or quality sufficient to secure more 

 than the average market price. If we but meet market re- 

 quirements, we might from the sale of eggs realize the full 

 measure of profit claimed at the commencement of this paper. 

 An average production of ten dozen — not large — would 

 insure a gross income of three dollars per head. With cost 

 of production reduced by a study of rations, the expense of 



