8o 



POULTRY CULTURE 



stock. A system which does not secure these results in any case 

 is not adapted to that case. To be generally serviceable, a system 

 must be adapted to continuous poultry keeping under ordinary 

 conditions. There are two typical systems of poultry keeping, 

 extensive and intensive, developed respectively from extensive 

 and intensive methods of handling single flocks. 1 



Ordinary farm poultry keeping is theoretically by the extensive 

 method. On most farms each kind of poultry is handled as one 

 flock, though when the flock is large, several houses may be required 

 by birds ranging over the same area. But when more birds are kept 

 in one flock than can procure, in the area over which they range, 

 the foods that they should procure by foraging, the method actually 



FIG. 79. Beginnings of an extensive system on the farm of Samuel Bates, 

 West Norwell, Massachusetts 



becomes intensive. It is not possible to indefinitely increase the 

 size of a flock and at the same time to maintain conditions favor- 

 able to the birds and to economy of labor. 



Extensive systems. By multiplying the number of flocks kept 

 by extensive methods extensive systems are developed. The proper 

 development of such a system requires that the houses be placed 



1 In this connection it is appropriate to state the facts in regard to the 

 numerous so-called systems of keeping poultry, or of determining facts of value 

 to the poultry keeper. The usual claims for a " system " are that it is based upon a 

 discovery of the person exploiting it, and that by the system the results that poultry 

 keepers desire are assured. The system is offered for sale, and the description of 

 it represents it as something to be procured only from its originator. The author, 

 in more than twenty years' intimate knowledge of poultry culture, has not found a 

 single instance where what was of value in such a " system " was not a matter of 

 common knowledge among well-informed poultrymen. In all these systems " what 

 is true is not new, and what is new is not true." 



