FIRST LESSONS IN POULTRY KEEPING. 163 



The beginner is apt to think that he can only sell to novices, anyway. This is a mistake. 

 Many a beginner has stock that older hands are glad to get, and will pay him more for tliau 

 beginners would. The profit in the thoroughbred poultry and egg trade depends on selling 

 to those who can use good stock and will pay for it. A trade that is limited to low priced 

 stock can be a profitable trade only when conducted on a very large scale. 



The Question of Values. 



How much better than market prices one may obtain for eggs and stock depends upon 

 several things, most important of which are the stock the demand the poultry keeper 

 himself. 



The basis of values of poultry and eggs is their market value. Whatever can be obtained 

 for them over and above market prices represents generally the amount of the premium some 

 one is willing to pay on some superficial quality he sees in the stock or on expectations of what 

 he hopes to realize from it. The beginner who grasps that fact will find it easier to adjust 

 himself and what business he does in thoroughbred poultry and eggs to the conditions of the 

 business. 



The market values of eggs and fowls are their bed rock values. There is an open market 

 for eggs and table poultry, and in this market, with an occasional slight exception, one man's 

 stuff brings the same price as any other stuff of the same quality. When we come to breeding 

 and exhibition values we have values from an entirely different standpoint. Mr. B., who is 

 a beginner in poultry, has stock from Mr. M., who, we will say, is a leading breeder of White 

 Wyandottes. His stock is better than that of Mr. P., who has some reputation as a breeder 

 of White Wyandottes, but not equal to that of Mr. M. 



Now if values in this line were absolute, or governed by fixed standards, Mr. B. should be 

 able to sell his stock for the same price as Mr. M. does, and for better prices than Mr. P. does. 

 But Mr. B. usually finds that he has to sell such fowls and eggs as he does sell at lower prices 

 than those P. gets, and away below those of M., whose stock is practically the same. He may 

 happen to have a better bird of M.'s stock than M. has, yet he cannot begin to get the price for 

 It that M. would. There is nothing strange and nothing wrong in this situation. The prices 

 of " fancy" stock are governed to some extent by quality by the fancier's standard, but to an 

 equal or greater extent by the reputation of the seller. This reputation is based on the 

 results of years of breeding, exhibition, and selling of stock, and while the degree of reputa- 

 tion depends on these things, the extent of the reputation depends more on the individuality of 

 the man in question, on his ability to sell goods, and on the volume, persistence, and effective- 

 ness of his advertising. 



The reputation which enables a breeder to get very high prices for what he has to sell 

 represents years of hard work and the investment of a good deal of money, and it is some- 

 thing that cannot be transferred. It attaches to the breeder rather than to the stock. 



The beginner must be satisfied at first to sell stock for less than older breeders are selling 

 stock of the same or Inferior quality, but he ought not to put prices so low as to discredit his 

 stock, or attract only the cheapest trade. It is better to market it than to do that. 



About the specific prices to be fixed, it is hard to advise, and equally difficult to describe the 

 sort of stock that should be used to fill an order at any specified price. Accurate knowledge 

 along this line comes, to those to whom it does come, only through experience in buying and 

 selling and observation of the purchases and sales of others. It depends very much on judg- 

 ment of quality, and It is in this respect that a great many beginners fail, mistaken judgment 

 leading them sometimes to give culls where they should send some of their best birds, or to use 

 very valuable birds to fill orders at low prices. There is no intentional dishonesty or special 

 favoring here, and the seller himself suffers more than anyone else from his mistakes, but the 

 efforts of people who know neither quality nor values to do business in thoroughbred poultry 

 have a most unsettling and deplorable effect on the general trade in what we may call the low 

 grades of good stock. Much of this trouble would be avoided if poultry keepers would refrain 

 from selling stoc'k until they were in a position to supply the produce of their own breeding. 



If I were to attempt to give rules to govern in the sale of stock, I would give a few simple 



