RHODE ISLAND EGG FARMING. 



A Description of the Primitive Equipment and Methods Used 



on Little Crompton's Famous Egg Farms — Buildings 



are Positively Cheap — Cracked Corn is the Principal 



Article of Food — Profits Average Seventy=five 



Cents to One Dollar a Hen. 



By Arthur C. Smith. 



If one were to seek the soundest and surest business 

 proposition in the entire field of poultry culture, he would 

 be compelled to choose between rearing the winter soft- 

 roasters as demonstrated by the South Shore poultry- 

 men of Massachusetts and market egg production ks con- 

 ducted on plants of Little Crompton, Rhode Island. The 

 first has been explained frequently, but the latter, the oldest 

 and best established paying poultry enterprise in the United 

 States, has seldom been described to the readers of poultry 

 literature. 



Little Crompton is a township in Rhode Island, at the 

 most, southeasterly point in the state. On the map, the 

 southern portion of the territory that comprises the town 

 appears to have been put there to separate Buzzard and Nar- 

 ragansett bays. To visit this most interesting poultry 

 colony, in many respects the most interesting in the country, 

 at least so considered by Mr. Edward Brown, the English 

 poultry authority and writer, one must leave the train at 

 Tiverton, R. I., and then procure a team for a drive of at 

 at least twenty-five miles, if he wishes to see any considerable 

 part of the colony. It is aptly termed a poultry colony, 

 as nearly every resident has poultry, either as the main 

 product of the farm or as an important' side issue. 



The drive from Tiverton around Little Crompton on a 

 fine day is a verj' pleasant one, taking in as it does the scenery 

 of both shores of the east channel of Narragansett bay. 

 About five miles from Tiverton station and not far from the 

 line that separates the two towns, the visitor comes to the 



