MANAGEMENT OF FOWLS in 



the plant is orderly, and, when well stocked with fowls and kept 

 clean, it presents a most attractive appearance. The houses and 

 yards for adult stock, the incubator cellar and the brooder houses, 

 the barns and sheds, and the dwelling of the owner or manager 

 occupy but a very small part of the farm usually from one 

 to three acres. The young chickens are grown year after year 

 on the nearest land not occupied by the permanent buildings 

 and yards. In most cases the land is so heavily stocked with 

 them that they secure almost nothing by foraging. 



The routine of work on such a farm is very exacting. The 

 fowls can do so little for themselves and require so much extra 

 care that the poultry keeper knows from the start that he cannot 

 make his business pay unless he gets a very high production. 

 So all his efforts are devoted to this end. He uses labor-saving 

 appliances, carefully systematizes his work, and by great effort 

 often succeeds in making a fair profit for a few years. It is at 

 this stage of his progress that the poultry keeper of this class 

 does the boasting which misleads others. Then things begin to 

 go wrong with his stock. His eggs do not hatch well, because 

 his chickens, while nominally on free range on a farm, have 

 really been no better off than chickens reared under ordinary 

 conditions in town. His chickens do not thrive, because they 

 are weak and the land is tainted. He himself is worn out with 

 long hours of work and no holidays, and if he does not realize 

 his mistake and close out the business in time, it is only a ques- 

 tion of continuing until his income and credit combined no 

 longer suffice to keep the business going. 



This in brief has been the history of all special poultry farms 

 where intensive methods were used, except the duck farms 

 and the several classes to be described farther on in this chapter. 

 By no means all succeed to even the extent described, because a 

 great many people who go into the business have so little capital 

 that they have to give up the business before they have been 

 able to make it show a profit. When the owners have capital, plants 



