34 



tions requires, apply ordinary farm methods to a large stock of 

 fowls, because it is desirable that, before explaining the inter- 

 mediate methods which suit intermediate conditions, we should 

 have clearly before us the leading contrasts of the systems between 

 which we wish to strike the happy medium. 



What we are seeking — what I suppose four out of every five 

 small farmers who become especially interested in poultry want, 

 even when they don't fully appreciate what it is they want — is a 

 method by which the farmer can keep as much poultry as possible 

 without giving the poultry the detailed attention which must be 

 given when the land occupied is stocked to the limit of its capacity. 



The problem is neither a deep nor a dif33cult one. That it has 

 been so seldom solved, and that statements of the solutions have 

 attracted so little attention, seems to me to be due to the preoccu- 

 pation of poultry keepers with other methods. However that may 

 be, it is a fact more self-evident in southern New England than in 

 anjT other section of the country that small farmers undertaking to 

 specialize in poultry have almost invariably adopted intensive 

 methods, and almost invariably to their own detriment, handicap- 

 ping their efforts to make poultry pay, and frequently also handi- 

 capping themselves heavily in their general work. 



I have seen farms by the score on which were poultry buildings 

 and yards unused, except as a few fowls went through or stayed 

 in at will, and rapidly going to decay ; and I have seen other 

 farms by the score where it was plain that the effort to make 

 poultry pay was being persisted in almost hopelessly, and at the 

 expense of some or all other opportunities of the farm ; and this 

 in the section of the United States which, in my judgment, is 

 favored above all others in the all-important matters of climate 

 and soil for poultry culture, and good 'markets for poultry prod- 

 ucts. When there is so much of this to be seen, what wonder is it 

 that people are continually asking, " Is there money in poultry?" 

 and, when told that there most certainly is, ask, " Then why are' 

 there so many poultry plants standing idle, and so many for sale?" 



I don't want readers to infer that I attribute to the use of inap- 

 propriate methods all the failures to make poultry pay on these 

 New England farms. A good many of these unused poultry plants 

 are monuments to inexperience, lack of capital or utter lack of 

 adaptability to the work. Many of them are the sepulchres of 

 foolish expectations of city-bred men, full of ideas and theories, 

 but with no knowledge of or training in any of the pursuits of 

 country life. It is not such failures as these that we are now dis- 

 cussing ; it is the failure — or, where failure has not yet come, but 

 seems impending, — the situation of the farmer who might reason.- 



