426 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub, Doc. 



poultry plant, following at first the intensive method a little 

 more closely than is advisable on a farm, and using but a 

 small portion of the land for poultry. But as the poultry 

 business grew, the need of abundance of room for the grow- 

 ing stock and the advantages of combining poultry keeping 

 and the growing of crops which could be used for poultry 

 food became so apparent that when recently the tenant's lease 

 expired, it was not renewed, and the owners are now oper- 

 ating the entire farm themselves, hiring competent farm 

 hands to attend to the crops, the poultry being still the 

 special charge of the young man who built up the poultry 

 plant. 



These two farms (I wish every reader of this article 

 could see them both) furnish the most noteworthy illustra- 

 tions of combined poultry keeping and crop growing I can 

 at present call to mind, though I could cite scores of cases 

 where similar combinations are made on a smaller scale. 



The point is to strike the proper balance between the 

 different kinds of work and make them fit well together. 



The Labor Question. 

 The most difficult matter to regulate, when poultry keep- 

 ing is combined with other farm lines of work, is the labor. 

 When the pressure of work in two or three different lines is 

 greatest at one season of the year, something is likely to be 

 neglected. As a rule, the branch of work neglected is that 

 which seems of least importance, or in which the worker 

 feels less certain of his ability to get the results desired. 

 Thus, an expert poultryman, trying to do some farming, 

 who finds that he cannot handle all the work he has under- 

 taken, usually neglects the farming ; while a farmer is more 

 apt to make sure of the crops, to the neglect of the poultry. 

 Now, I do not feel that I am at all competent to tell any one 

 who gets into such a predicament how to handle the crops 

 to get as much as possible out of them with the least pos- 

 sible expenditure of labor ; but I can point out some ways 

 for lightening the burden of poultry work. What T have 

 to say will not, perhaps, be of much immediate value to one 

 involved in a tangle of overwork. It is more in the way 



