MANAGEMENT OF FOWLS 1 1 3 



These people were not under any delusions about the limita- 

 tions on this line of production. They knew that the demand 

 for very small chickens at very high prices was limited and 

 easily satisfied. But, as usual, the published accounts of what 

 they were doing set a great many people to figuring the possi- 

 bilities of profit from such a business conducted on a large scale. 

 For a few years the broiler craze affected nearly every one in- 

 terested in poultry keeping. Thousands who never engaged in 

 it were restrained only because of lack of capital or inability 

 to adapt it to their circumstances. Many people who had been 

 through several unsatisfactory ventures in poultry keeping 

 thought that they saw in this the one sure road to wealth, and 

 began to make plans to grow broilers in large quantities. Be- 

 sides these business ventures there were countless small ones, 

 sometimes conducted under the most unsuitable conditions. 

 People tried to grow broilers in living rooms, in attics, in all 

 sorts of unheated outbuildings, and in house cellars to which 

 the daylight hardly penetrated. 



Present condition of broiler growing. The production of 

 broilers as a specialty did not last long. The improvement in 

 cold-storage methods soon made it possible for speculators to 

 carry over large quantities of summer chickens, and the poultry 

 keepers in other lines could easily arrange to produce all the 

 fresh broilers that could be sold at a good profit. 



ROASTER GROWING 



Description of a good roaster. To roast nicely, a fowl must 

 be full-grown and well filled out, but young, soft-meated, and 

 fat. A fowl is "ripe" for a choice roaster for only a short 

 period after arriving at maturity. When a pullet has laid a 

 few eggs, her flesh becomes harder and is never again as tender 

 and juicy as it was before she laid an egg. When the spurs 

 of a cockerel begin to harden and to grow a long, sharp point, 



