g6 THE PRACTICAL POULTRY KEEPER. 



CHAPTER VI. 



POULTRY ON THE FARM. 



THE contents of the previous pages will have made it 

 abundantly 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 tremendous 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 occupations, 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 disbelieved 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 circum- 

 stances ? But it has been proved over and over again, that 

 poultry upon a farm will pay uncommonly well if judiciously 



