SOME. TYPICAL VLNTURE.5 IN POULTRY KLLPIiNG. 61 



LESSON V 



SECTION II. 



Some Typical Ventures in Poultry Keeping. 



HERE is one of the most remarkable successes in poultry keeping. Less than twenty 

 years ago a laboring man of foreign birth, living in New England, bought a worn ouV 

 farm, paying a email amount of cash, and giving a mortgage for the balance. In all 

 his life this man had never earned ow r a dollar and a half a day. He was industrious 

 and frugal. His wife was the worthy helpmeet of such a man, doing her share to make bis- 

 slender earnings go as far as possible. His children were trained in the industrious and thrifty 

 habits of their parents, and at the same time given good common school educations. 



At the time this farm was bought the sons of the family were young men, working generally,, 

 as I have been told, by the day for farmers and others in their vicinity. After the farm was 

 bought the father and his several sons continued day's works for others, carrying on the opera- 

 tions on their own farm at such T>dd times as their services were not in demand elsewhere, and 

 in this way turning all their spare time to good account. 



In their efforts to make the farm profitable they tried various special lines, among them poul- 

 try keeping. They established quite a flock of practical thoroughbred fowls, and found then* 

 increasingly profitable, and were gradually increasing their equipment and stock, when in some 

 way their attention was turned to duck growing. Just how this came about is not, so far as I 

 have learned, a matter of record but in view of the fact that this was just at the beginning of 

 the great boom in market duck culture there is nothing at all strange about it. And then there 

 was located not many miles from them, the farm of one of the pioneer duck growers in thi* 

 country, a man who was doing a large and growing business in market ducks. Had the inter- 

 est in duck culture been less widespread than it was they could hardly have failed to hear of 

 this man and to be interested in what he was doing. They visited him and decided to begin 

 duck growing in a small way. Within a few years their business had so increased that the 

 entire family were giving all their time to it. The farm had been paid for, a plant representing- 

 very much more than the value of the land had been erected. (Though a large plant, it was by 

 no means an elaborate one). Their joint incomes were steadily increasing: they had ample 

 capital to meet the growing demands of their growing business, and secure correspondingly 

 larger returns on the amount invested ; the farm acreage was gradually made more productive; 

 new houses were erected. In less than ten years from the start on that farm their business- 

 ranked among the first poultry businesses in this country, both in volume and profitableness. 



About the same time that operations began on this farm some members of an enormousiy 

 wealthy family men, too, who had made their money, and are still making it in their regular 

 business,- established a poultry farm only a few hours distant from that I have just briefly 

 described. They had unlimited land and unlimited capital. They hired a manager at a good 

 salary and built an expensive plant. They went into it for profit, not for fun; but when I 

 saw the plant about ten years after its opening, I was told by one who knew its financial con- 

 dition intimately, that the plant represented a net loss to its ownersof over$20,000. They were 

 men who rould stand even heavier loss without financial or personal inconvenience, but thpv 

 were not willing to run the plant at a loss. That was not what they operated it for. They 



