CHAPTER XXX 



THE TRADE IN PURE-BRED POULTRY AND EGGS 



Textbook treatment of the trade in poultry for exhibition and 

 breeding discusses it for both buyers and sellers, for the beginner 

 in this line of trade is interested in it in both capacities, and is 

 usually in need of information and advice in both ; it is as neces- 

 sary to buy right as to sell right, and more difficult to learn how. 

 Through inability to buy right most novices lose from one to three 

 years in getting a good start in breeding fine poultry. It is not 

 possible for any one to wholly avoid mistakes, experienced 

 breeders often make them, but any beginner may greatly reduce 

 the number of his mistakes, and save money and time, by learning 

 something of the general conditions of this trade, and of the obliga- 

 tions of buyer and seller in it, before he begins to buy or places 

 an order for stock, instead of learning by repeated mistakes how 

 not to buy. In many of the matters treated in this chapter it is 

 not necessary to distinctly specify the interests of buyer and seller, 

 for they partly coincide, and when they do not, the particular in- 

 terest of each is obvious. Special statements of different interests 

 are made wherever the conditions require. 



Composite character of the trade. There are very few instances 

 where staple food products are also developed for their aesthetic 

 values, none where it is done extensively, as with poultry. In 

 consequence of this combination of economic and aesthetic elements 

 in the trade there is more or less conflict between the advocates 

 of utility and the advocates of fancy, and a tendency for the ex- 

 tremists in each cult to emphasize their devotion to their own 

 ideas by pointed disregard of those of their opponents. On the 

 whole, however, the compound nature of values in pure-bred poultry 

 is rightly appreciated in America, and while some friction between 

 these interests is inevitable, the extremist in either direction has 

 little influence. The great body of persons giving special attention 



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