SYSTEMS OF POULTRY KEEPING 



outside the district un- 

 til recent years. 1 This 

 neglect of so impor- 

 tant a development 

 was due to the gen- 

 eral faith in intensive 

 methods and to the 

 prevailing idea that 

 poultry culture on an 

 extensive scale could 

 only be carried on suc- 

 cessfully when artifi- 



FIG. 84. Intensive back-yard plant. (Photograph 

 from E. A. Day, Farmington, Minnesota) 



cial methods of incubating and brooding were used, and the sup- 

 posed correct principles of housing, feeding, etc. (which made the 



FIG. 85. Intensive system on farm in central Massachusetts. Shelters with small 

 attached runs. Note similarity between the unit in this system and the house 



and run in Fig. 84 



ventilation of a house an engineering feat and the feeding of a few 

 fowls a chemical problem) were carefully observed. Not until the 



1 I first visited this section and published an account of the system in 1901. 

 No extended account of it had previously been published, and the occasional items 

 regarding it appearing in one of the poultry papers were hardly noticed. Even to 

 this day the greater part of the poultry press is not interested in these poultry 

 keepers, who, with few exceptions, neither buy nor sell anything through advertis- 

 ing. I would not state positively from memory, and verification would be difficult, 

 but to the best of my recollection it was not until five or six years later than the pub- 

 lication of my account that investigators of poultry matters began to visit this sec- 

 tion, and these were mostly engaged in educational work. 



