60 GENERAL MANAGEMENT OF POULTRY. 



CHAPTER VI. 



POULTRY ON THE FARM. 



THE contents of the previous pages will have made it abun- 

 dantly clear, that in first return of gross profit over and above 

 their food, poultry are far superior to any other, class of live 

 stock. If there were no drawbacks to this, large poultry-farms 

 could not fail to be highly profitable ; but there is one tre- 

 mendous drawback, which prospectuses of such undertakings 

 always omit to state. It is, that the profit has to be collected 

 in a vast number of very small sums, from a great number of 

 small animals, which yet cannot be dealt with in one large 

 flock like sheep. Hence the liability to many small losses and 

 wastes ; while the realisation of the products demands such 

 detailed oversight, and so many separate acts, that the cost of 

 accommodation and labour and marketing is relatively very large. 

 These facts account not only for the general want of 

 success in poultry-farming as such, but for the general neglect 

 of poultry in England as part of the stock on the farm. Left 

 pretty much to themselves, the returns have not been duly 

 collected, nor even a profitable stock secured. In France, 

 where most of the land is cut up into extremely small occupa- 

 tions, the labour of looking after the small number of fowls it 

 will carry with the other stock is never felt or counted. On 

 the larger English farms, it must be provided for and paid for, 

 if it is given at all ; this is grudged, or any due return dis- 

 believed in, and so it is not given, but just a few fowls kept to 

 supply the family with eggs, and no more thought about them. 

 They are of quite uncertain age, some of them very old, and 

 many very bad layers. What kind of stock would pay under 

 such circumstances'? But it has been proved over and over 

 again, that poultry upon a farm will pay uncommonly well if 

 judiciously managed, ard their numbers calculated according 

 to what the farm ih. 



