32 



THE AMERICAN BREEDS OF POULTRY 



A Nine-Wedk-Old Rhode Island Red Chick, 

 Well Developed For Its Age. 



and increased with the popu- 

 lation at the expense of other 

 classes of livestock. Beef ani- 

 mals alone cannot subsist and 

 increase in numbers when an 

 increasing population inevi- 

 tably requires that from year 

 to year the products of the 

 land be more and more in- 

 tensively produced. This, of 

 course, is a view into the 

 future. 



At present a large part of 

 the farm crops are produced 

 especially as a food for ani- 

 mals. 



Of the corn grown, over 

 ninety percent is fed to ani- 

 mals, and they consume all 

 of the stover, for corn is pri- 

 marily a food for animals; 

 they consume seventy per- 

 cent of the oats, and thirty 

 percent of the wheat returns 

 to the farms as bran and middlings. The pasture and hay crops are 

 much larger than the cereal crops, and animals alone afford a means 

 of marketing them. Livestock, therefore, follows crop production as 

 a natural sequence. 



It takes about one hundred pounds of feed to produce twenty 

 pounds of meat, regardless of the kind of animal. Meat is a high 

 form of nourishment for human consumption. While a great wealth 

 of plant products is directly available to man, both in abundant quan- 

 tity and appetizing form, the fact is that half his diet consists of 

 foods of animal origin. The United States Bureau of Labor statistics 

 show that in the city of Toledo, Ohio, for instance, during the year 

 ended March 31, 1918, the average family of the 207 families investi- 

 gated in the shipbuilding district where data were collected, spent 

 $605.17 for food, of which $303.24 was for meat products, excluding fish. 

 Economical producers. Animals such as cattle, hogs and hens bear 

 an intermediate relation between plants and man, and foods of animal 

 origin are more costly and valuable than foods of vegetable origin, 

 because the production of the former involves the use of the latter. 

 Therefore, the economy with which animals produce is of ever great 

 importance. The hen and the cow are entitled to first position in the 

 ranks as economical producers. Unlike beef cattle or hogs, they are 

 not designed especially as a laboratory to convert fields of corn or 

 acres of grass into a marketable product, beef and pork, by which 



