POULTRY MANAGEMENT AT THE MAINE AGRI- 

 CULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION. 



G. M. Gowell. 



Many years practical experience in raising and keeping poul- 

 try and investigations in poultry breeding at this Station have 

 resulted in the accumulation of a considerable fund of informa- 

 tion on poultry management. The object of this paper is to out- 

 line this experience for the benefit of poultry keepers, and help 

 them discriminate between some of the wrong theories which 

 have underlain much of the common practice of the past, and 

 the better theories, which underlie other and newer methods that 

 are yielding more satisfactory results. It may be that the 

 methods in vogue with us are no better than those practiced by 

 others, but in the following pages the attempt is made to con- 

 cisely state the practices which are now being successfully 

 employed at this Station. 



The difficulties attending artificial poultry keeping lie in the 

 numbers of small animals that make up the business. With 

 most domestic animals the care-taker treats each one individu- 

 ally, and there is far less draft on the abilities of the herdsman 

 with his large animals than on the manager of even a small poul- 

 try plant with its far greater numbers of individuals. 



Labor is the costliest factor that enters into the management 

 and equipment of a poultry farm. The cost of food required to 

 produce a pound of beef, pork or chicken does not differ greatly, 

 but while the dressed steer and pig sell for from 5 to 8 cents per 

 pound, the chicken sells for from 15 to 20 cents per pound, and 

 early in the season for much more. The differences in their sell- 

 ing prices represent the differences in the risk and the skill 

 employed in their production. Furthermore, the increasing 

 demand for choice articles of food will tend to maintain these 

 prices, even though the supply be greatly increased. The pro- 

 ducts of the poultry farms, the fresh self-sealed eggs, each an 



