io5 The Illustrated Book of Poultry. 



yards (necessitating the system of indirect feeding) are the central features relied upon in our 

 ' egg-farming ' to keep down labour to the minimum. All the other features are subordinate. 



" Five hands (with two horses) can attend to the whole establishment of 6,000 adult fowls, and 

 the excess of produce over feed will be 5,000 dollars for the laying stock of 5,000 birds. Nothing 

 is said about any income from the breeders and sitters ; they are supposed to be as much a 

 necessary evil as anything ; or about income from crops or manure, that being an offset, and a fair 

 offset, as our experience and laborious accounts show, against the interest on land and buildings. 



" There are only three systems of fowl-keeping possible. There are many modifications of 

 these, it is true, but to one genus or another of the three following they may all be referred. 



" One is the highly artificial or bird-cage plan of Mr. Gcyclin, as detailed in his ' Poultry 

 Keeping in a Commercial Point of View,' a book which is, after all, one of the most valuable 

 repositories of information for fowl-keepers ever written. But the cage plan fails, because there is 

 not enough exercise for the birds, and altogether too much for the attendant. 



" Another is the ordinary plan of the villager or the fancier, given in poultry-books and 

 agricultural papers in endless variations of one tunc, and that tune a ' house and yard adjoining' — 

 a good plan for the family who make no account of the labour involved, and a good plan too for 

 getting a start in operations on a large scale; but a money-losing plan if it is attempted to supply 

 city markets with table fowls and eggs at ordinary market rates. 



" The remaining one is that pursued by nature before fowls were domesticated, and the one 

 under which they have been mainly kept since, during a period antedating history and continuing 

 to the present ; by giving them their freedom in the daytime and a shelter by night. As the wild 

 fowls need no attendant at all, so by arrangements as near like theirs as possible the least labour 

 is demanded. Fend off storms and wind and the summer sun by the simplest shelter thai can be 

 made, dodge the labour of house-cleaning by ploughing and moving buildings, and make the mutual 

 antagonisms of neighbouring flocks take the place of yard-fences, just as among wild jungle-fowls, 

 and the maximum of thrift and the minimum of labour and expense will be secured." 



We have endeavoured fully to explain Mr. Stoddard's principles and plans, because they bear 

 evidence of more practical and experimental knowledge of fowls than any previous theories have 

 afforded ; because they have aroused great attention in the United States ; and also because, after 

 careful consideration, we are unable to approve of them. It is hinted on many occasions during the 

 lengthy exposition from which we have gathered our summary, that the \'arious details have been 

 practically worked out ; but it is never affirmed that the whole plan has been in actual operation 

 for any time sufficient to test it ; and in face of the considerations now to be reviewed, we are 

 con\inced that such a test will ultimately prove unfavourable. 



In the first place, whilst fowls when once fairly domiciled have a very strong sense of locality, 

 we are convinced from our own experience, and since the publication of Mr. Stoddard's ideas, 

 careful observation on this point, that it will be impossible to rely on the plan proposed for keeping 

 the flocks separate when connected with the necessary operation of planting out new colonies every 

 season ; the more so as, while all the immediately adjoining buildings are of a different colour, each 

 flock has only to go twice the distance to find a house of similar colour to its own. We greatly 

 admire the ingenuity of the plan, and if it CMild be made to succeed it would save not only the 

 cost of fencing, but the time and labour of opening and shutting gates ; but we fear it will not be 

 found practicable. Should it be so, however, we have no hesitation in saying that so far no 

 arrangement can equal it in convenience and economy. This question can only be answered 

 by actual experiment oji a large scale. 



