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their operations with poultry financially successful. Single, sep- 

 arate branches of poultry culture have rarely been made profitable 

 as all-year-round exclusive occupations. It is worth while to note 

 and remember this, because some very plausible arguments in 

 favor of extreme specialization in poultry culture are sometimes 

 advanced, and their partial presentation of the facts is often so 

 alluring that many people are persuaded into doing what is soon 

 found to be unprofitable. 



When a man who knows little or nothing about poultry and as 

 little about growing farm crops writes to ask me if it is possible 

 for him to stock a farm with poultry, conduct it as a poultry farm, 

 and at the same time produce on the farm the food for the poultry, 

 I answer most emphatically that it is not, — not for him. When a 

 good poultryman who is no farmer asks a similar question, I do not 

 feel warranted to encourage him to try to do more, at first, than 

 grow a part of the food for the fowls, preferably such things as cab- 

 bage, mangels, turnips, grain to be fed in the sheaf, not attempt- 

 ing the growing of grain crops on a large scale until he is more 

 sure of his ground. But the case of the farmer engaging in or 

 extending operations in poultry keeping is quite different. He is 

 generally somewhat of an expert in crop growing, and, even 

 though he may not have given special attention to poultry culture 

 before, is apt to be pretty well grounded in general methods of 

 caring for live stock. He, therefore, is in a position to begin at 

 once to combine poultry keeping with his other farming. 



Methods of Poultry Keeping Compared. 

 It was a surprise and something of a disappointment to me, 

 coming from a western State, to find so many of the farmers of 

 New England who were giving special attention to poultry adopt- 

 ing the back-yard methods of the city poultry keeper, thus throw- 

 ing away some of the positive advantages the farm offers the 

 poultry keeper, and taking instead the doubtful advantages of 

 modern intensive methods of poultry culture. I would not be 

 understood as decrying these intensive methods. They are good 

 methods, — under some conditions they may be the best methods ; 

 but they are not — except when greatly modified (that is, when 

 less intense) — good methods for the farmer, and I do not think 

 they are the best methods of poultry keeping. And, while it is 

 true that many special poultry growers have succeeded with poul- 

 try, while neglecting the crop-producing possibilities of their farms 

 and buying practically all food for their fowls, the experience of 

 those who grow a part or all of their food convinces me that such 

 a combination is to be the favorite combination including poultry 



