AMERICAN POULTRY FARMS. 125 



their show career has been wonderfully successful, and their 

 sales of this kind in birds and eggs average 4,000 dollars per 

 annum. But they still market great quantities of eggs for 

 eating, gathering from farmers round as well as their own, 

 totalling lately about 100,000 dozen a year. Private 

 customers are still sought as far as possible, and 120 dozen 

 weekly go to the Fifth Avenue Hotel in New York. 

 White Wyandottes and white Leghorns are the stock 

 chiefly kept. 



Mr. Hunter's own experience is very interesting and 

 instructive. His farm was intended, when begun, to be his 

 principal industrial concern ; but as he was gradually led 

 into journalism it could not be developed as first expected, 

 while on the other hand results were probably noted and 

 tested with a care for figures which might not otherwise 

 have been possible. The farm of 30 acres is fifteen miles 

 from Boston, and was bought fifteen years ago, with the 

 idea of keeping all the fowls in moderate flocks, with 

 sufficient range, however the number might be extended.* 

 Experiment led him to believe that the necessary space was 

 about 10 square feet of house-room and 100 square feet of 

 yard or run, per bird. His first house was 36 by 15 feet 

 3 feet being a passage-way and the rest divided into three 

 pens, 12 feet square, with a yard of same width and 100 feet 

 long ; and his first year ended with 75 good pullets of his 

 own breeding on hand, and a profit of one dollar and one 

 cent. In the new house were placed 45 of the pullets, 1 5 in 

 each pen. The second year gave a profit of 234 dollars, and 

 the laying stock was 130 head ; and the house was now 

 lengthened 72 feet, giving six more pens ; the third year, 

 157 layers gave a profit of over 3 dollars each. The plant 



*The farm and results are described in various numbers of the Boston 

 Farm Poultry ; but we are also indebted to English articles in Tiu 

 Feathered World. 



