42 BULLETIN 341, IT. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



products from their kitchen gardens and reported no acreage of com- 

 mercial truck crops. In the case of both acreage and income the 

 number of farms is too small to permit a satisfactory comparison 

 between labor income and magnitude of the trucking business, such 

 as has been made above for other crops. The small number of these 

 farms is itself an indication that the business is not at home here, 

 even if the population to be supplied is very large. 



Poultry. — The receipts from poultry and eggs constitute 8.2 per 

 cent of the total receipts of the 378 farms. Only eight of the total 

 number reported no income from this source. From the standpoint 

 of the number of farms, this enterprise, therefore, heads the list of 

 farm enterprises in this locality; that is, it is the most universally 

 found of any farm enterprise. But we have already seen that in very 

 few cases do the flocks exceed 200 hens. Poultry thus constitute one 

 of the more important of the minor enterprises on the farms of this 

 region, as they do so generally in nearly all parts of this country. 

 Do these poultry pay? The}^ furnish a very important part of the 

 family living, but this is not taken into account in this study. The 

 data here given relate only to the commercial phase of the business. 

 If they are profitable, why do not farmers keep larger flocks ? These 

 questions are quite definitely answered in the data obtained in this 

 survey, and the answer is one of great importance both to the farmer 

 whose poultry are merely incidental to the general farm business and 

 to the poultryman who makes of them a major enterprise. 



Percentages of income from poultry are about equally numerous 

 from 1 per cent up to about 9 per cent. Above this the numbers fall 

 off rapidly. Fifty-one farms derive more than 20 per cent of their 

 income from this source and eight farms more than 40 per cent. 

 Thus, of 370 farms keeping poultry, only 8 would be classed as real 

 poultry farms, while of 347 farms deriving incomes from the sale 

 of dairy products, 157 are classed as real dairy farms, and that, too, 

 without counting income from the sale of cows and calves. Why is 

 the more universal poultry enterprise in nearly all cases a minor one 

 while the somewhat less common dairy enterprise is so frequently the 

 leading source of income ? The figures given in Tables XIX and XX 

 show the reason for this to be that when the poultry business is made 

 a minor enterprise it is profitable, while when it rises to the dignity 

 of a major enterprise it often becomes unprofitable or at least much 

 less profitable than when it occupies a minor place on the farm. On 

 the other hand, the dairy business in this region is more profitable 

 as a major than as a minor enterprise. 



Unfortunately, the number of farms in wo of the classes of Table 

 XIX is quite small, but the very low average labor income in both 

 these classes can hardly be regarded as insignificant. 



