412 BOARD OF AGlilCULTUKE. [-Pub. Doc. 



THE MANAGEMENT OF POULTRY ON SMALL FARMS. 



BY JOHN H. ROBINSON, EDITOR " KARM-roL LTRY," BOSTON, MASS. 



A large farm otters the best opportunity to kee}) poultry 

 with little labor and conii)aratively large i)rofits, but the 

 owner of the large farm is not often much interested in 

 poultry. It is the small farmers, under necessity of making 

 the most of every opportunity to make money on their land, 

 who are attracted by the possil)ilities of poultry culture. As 

 personally and through correspondence I have for the last 

 six years come in contact with owners and renters of small 

 farms, in the eastern States, and especially in Massachusetts, 

 Rhode Island and Connecticut, who are trying to make a 

 specialty of poultr}^, I have found that the most troublesome 

 impediment to the development of their plans was the want 

 of a method suitable to their circumstances. 



A very large percentage of the small New England farms 

 are of such dimensions and pro})ortions that the fowls kept 

 cannot be given liberty except at the risk of their trespassing 

 on the land of neighbors. Because of this, many small 

 farmers interested in poultry have adopted the intensive 

 methods which small })()ultr3^ keepers in towns often find nec- 

 essary, but which large poultry kee})ers and farmers ought to 

 avoid. 



Intensive methods make the care of poultry a grind and 

 drudgery, monopolizing the keeper's time to such an extent 

 that it is almost fully occupied in caring for a few hundred 

 fowls. Indeed, I have seen a great many people keeping 

 poultry by such intensive methods that they hardly dared 

 leave home for an hour for fear of disarranofins: their care- 

 fully Imlanced system, and could never by any possibility 

 make a living hy their methods if it became necessary for 



