First poultry house used by Charles Weeks 

 in California 



CHAPTER III. 



First Attempts at Poultry Raising in California 



THE selection of a location for poultry raising in California is a most 

 serious problem. I did not realize the importance of getting the 

 poultry ranch located on a rich soil with plenty of water for irrigation. 



I did not realize at that time that the highest success on the land 

 in California is obtained by irrigation. With no practical experience 

 as to California conditions, I started out on that long hunt for a 

 location. Almost every man, some time in life, takes a turn in this 

 exciting hunt for an ideal location for that dream home. I would 

 choose a beautiful place to live where I could grow my own vines and 

 trees and raise poultry and still be close to the large centers of popu- 

 lation. 



It would make too long a story to go into details telling how I 

 visited the poultry ranches in the Petaluma country trying to find a 

 location that would suit my whims and meager capital. Somehow 

 Petaluma did not appeal to me. My aesthetic tastes may have been 

 too highly developed for an egg farmer, but the lack of system and 

 unkempt appearance of most of the ranches discouraged me. I must 

 have a pretty, systematic poultry ranch, and I did not want it sur- 

 rounded by shacks. Little did I then know of the toils, and trials, 

 and experimenting it would take to evolve even a plain poultry ranch 

 on economic lines. These egg farmers were passing through their early 

 experimental periods, and it was not strange that every man had a 

 different brooder system and that there were almost as many styles of 

 laying houses as there were men. Old abandoned shacks of houses 

 cumbered the landscape then as now, because all were experimenting 

 and there was no established system that was universally accepted. 

 Every enterprise must pass through this transition stage. 



