BROILERS AND ROASTERS. 7 



. What is a Roaster ? — Here the dictionaries 

 are hardly up to date in their description of a roaster 

 as "an article or animal suitable for roasting, espe- 

 cially a pig," and in the various transpositions of the 

 words of that definition (taken from the Standard 

 Dictionary) in the other dictionaries. Roasting chickens 

 are used so much more than roasting pigs that the 

 word " roaster" today probably suggests chicken to many 

 times more people than think of little pigs when they hear 

 that word. A fowl suitable for roasting must be a young 

 fowl about full grown, but still soft meated, and to roast 

 satisfactorily must be moderately fat. Roasters are 

 roughly classed as " small roasters" and " large roasters." 

 By far the greatest demand is for small roasters weighing 

 eight to ten pounds to the pair, though the demand for 

 large roasters weighing as much apiece as these do to the 

 pair is steadily increasing. Singular as it may seem the 

 production of large roasters is the most profitable branch 

 of market poultry culture, duck growing alone excepted. 

 The reasons for this will be discussed elsewhere. 



6. Broiler Growing as an Exclusive Business 



Growing broilers on a large scale as a specialty began at 

 Hammonton, N. J., nearly twenty years ago. Those first 

 engaging in it there were mostly men whose regular 

 occupation was fruit growing, gardening, or some such 

 pursuit which left them some months of comparative leisure 

 each winter. The always high prices for young chickens 

 in late winter and early spring and the developments of 

 artificial incubation and brooding seem to have suggested 

 broiler raising to some of these men as a possible profitable 

 occupation for this period. Many tried it. Some made 



