86 BROILERS AND ROASTERS. 



growers are producing far the best poultry that goes to the 

 American market in quantity, and that they are, as a class, 

 making more on their investment and labor than any other 

 class of poultry keepers in this country. That being the 

 case, it would be superfluous to discuss improving their 

 system here. When the reader has paralleled their success 

 by their methods — which are the methods which, to date, 

 have given the best all round results — he will be ready to 

 consider how to improve them — if they then seem to him 

 to need improving. 



An important feature of the system used here is the thor- 

 ough cleaning up of the houses and yards once a year. As 

 there is a period of two or three months between the mar- 

 keting of the last of one crop and the setting of the first 

 incubator for the next, and at this time there is not a 

 chicken or fowl in the houses used for growing stock, it is 

 possible to give the houses and land adjoining them a more 

 thorough cleaning up than the ordinary plant ever gets. 

 The earth floors of the houses are removed and new earth 

 or sand hauled in. The fences, wire netting on stakes, 

 are taken up and the land plowed and planted to some crop 

 for next winter's chickens — generally to winter rye. 



48. Caponizing. — The cockerels of the winter chick- 

 ens grown for roasters are caponizted, but are not dressed 

 like or sold as capons. Cockerels and pullets alike go to 

 the market as large roasting chickens. The operation of 

 caponizing need not be described here. The reader who 

 wants to learn caponizing should learn from an expert 

 operator if possible, or failing that should use the full 

 instructions which special books on caponizing give. 



Chickens grown for summer roasters and marketed at 



