o Profitable Poultry Keeping. 



auspices, situated witbin a short distance of a large manu- 

 facturing town, where eggs could be sold in any numbers at 

 high rates. The ground laid out for the farm was in many 

 respects very suitable, and the houses and runs designed 

 with a considerable amount of skill and foresight. The owner, 

 however, who was thus careful in almost everything else, 

 suddenly became negligent when he* began to stock his yards, 

 and, instead of buying a few birds of a good laying breed and 

 breeding from them as many layers as he required, he went 

 into the market and bought some hundreds of hens, paying 

 no regard whatever to age or breed. It is true that he got 

 them at a less rate than he could have bought pure bred stock, 

 and he began to get returns from the sale of produce at once, 

 which he could not have done had he bred his stock. But 

 the returns were miserably small, the bulk of the hens soon 

 wanted to sit, and more hens were bought in order to supply 

 the demand for eggs, disease crept in through overcrowding, 

 and the balance-sheet showed a very decided margin on the 

 wrong side. Disheartened and disgusted, the owner soon 

 turned up the whole affair, a sadder, a poorer, though 

 perhaps not a wiser man. Such instances as these could be 

 multiplied to almost any extent, and it has probably been 

 more due to want of knowledge or thought, that the idea has 

 taken root that poultry-keeping does not pay 



There is. an idea very prevalent, that cross-bred poultry 

 are much more profitable to keep than pure bred ones, and, 

 whilst there can be no question that it is a decided advantage 

 to cross certain breeds one with another, in order to obtain 

 specific results, that is, of course, if the crossing is scien- 

 tifically and skilfully performed, having an end in view, this 

 is altogether different to the breeding of mongrels, which is 

 so common. In the former case there is method, in the 

 latter there is none, and it is to this indiscriminate crossing 

 that we owe the present degenerate races of farmyard or barn- 



