56 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



innkeeper offers sixty cents per dozen for three hundred dozen 

 of eggs per day, if he can find the party Avho will guarantee 

 their delivery fresh ; and this is for the demand of three 

 hotels only. The consumption of meat to each guest per 

 day at the Grand Pacific, the proprietor informs me, is $2.50, 

 and two-thirds of that amount is for poultry and game. 

 Another item should be considered in this connection, and 

 that is, thousands of prairie farmers, who live so remote as to 

 make the running of meat-wagons unprofitable, are obliged 

 to rely on their farms for fresh meat, and it is a fact that two- 

 thirds of it is poultry and eggs. It is the custom with them 

 in early winter to kill and pack in snow and ice the supplies 

 of poultry for home use. This, with the richer third of the 

 population who consume far more than the estimate offered, 

 will more than make up for the poor of our Eastern cities, 

 who consider poultry a luxury and seldom indulge in its use. 

 With these items as data, I claim my estimate of five hundred 

 millions to be far less, rather than more, than the actual yearly 

 product, which, as I have said, makes the industry of poultry 

 breeding and keeping one of the largest in which our farmers 

 are interested. Like in comparison as the giant oak to its acorn 

 origin, is this large product, made up from the small collections 

 from the small flocks of fowls seen about the door of the hamlet 

 and the farmhouse, in numbers of 12, 20, 30, and 50, and 

 where a larger number is seen so rarely that they become 

 the exception. These flocks pay a large profit on their cost 

 of production, as may be seen by consulting the different 

 societies' reports. In 1858, we see that thirty-eight fowls, 

 kept in small yards, under unfavorable circumstances, with a 

 market at thirty-eight cents for corn, sixteen and two-thirds 

 cents for eggs, and fifteen cents per pound for poultry, yielded 

 a net profit of $1.38 per head. In 1861, Mr. Mansfield's 

 experiment with one hundred hens, having a free range of the 

 farm, consuming but ninety-three bushels of corn or its equiv- 

 alent, produced one hundred and forty-seven eggs each (no 

 chickens being raised that year) , and yielded a net profit on 

 eggs alone of $1.35 per head ; to which, had the value of the 

 guano been added, the figures would have reached the sum of 

 $1.60. These, and other statements, are to be found in the 

 Middlesex South Society's reports, of $2, $2.25, and $2.50 



