3<3 BROILERS AND ROASTERS. 



grower saves labor in caring for his fowls if he has land 

 enough to spread them out well. Besides this, although 

 the conditions of growing roasters admit of planting the 

 land on which they have run after they are marketed, and 

 growing late crops on it, if the land is heavily stocked with 

 poultry year after year so much fertilizer is added to the 

 land that planting it for a part of a season does not take 

 the manure out of the soil fast enough to keep it as clean 

 .as desirable. Growers who have been established on farms 

 -which were ample as long as the land could take the 

 ■manure almost invariably arrive within, at most, ten or 

 twelve years, at the point where they feel they should have 

 land enough to move the stock about more and give land 

 that has been occupied for several seasons a rest for an 

 ■equal period. This is a point which it is hard to make 

 either the beginner or one who has had a few successful 

 seasons on a small plant appreciate to the extent of locat- 

 ing where he has two or three times as much land as he is 

 likely to have occasion to use for some years to come. 

 There are roaster plants producing 4,000 to 5,000 chickens 

 ii season on ten or twelve acres of land, but I do not think 

 .any of the proprietors of such plants would start again on 

 so small a farm. With two, three or four times as much 

 land one insures himself against being handicapped in the 

 iuture for want of land room. 



As to the kind of land, I think it may be said that the 

 •day when land that was not fit for any other purpose was 

 ■considered just the thing for poultry is about gone by. Of 

 .course no sensible person would go to the vicinity of a 

 large city and buy high priced garden land to keep poultry 

 on, but there is a medium between land of that class and 



