POULTRY PRODUCTION AND POULTRY INDUSTRY 45 



For specific farms, transportation facilities and nearness 

 to markets determine tlie commercial advisability of empha- 

 sizing poultry production, and unfavorable soil or climatic 

 conditions are, of course, local limiting factors. 



Food Manufacturing Efficiency of the Hen. — As the cjuestion 

 of the food-supply lieconies more and more acute and the 

 cost of living higher, the efficiency of the various domestic 

 animals as human food factories will l)e taken more and more 

 into consideration. In the last analysis, other things being 

 ecpial, the animal that manufactures the least human food 

 from a given amount of digestible feed will be the one whose 

 product will be the most expensive. As food becomes in- 

 creasingly expensive there will be a cessation in the con- 

 sumption of the more expensive kinds as articles of common 

 diet, and they will be placed among the luxuries. 



As the size of farm or even town flocks grows beyond that 

 necessary for waste consumption, the efficiency of poultry 

 with reference to food production is going to play a larger 

 and larger part. 



Unfortunately, data arc not available which show the com- 

 parative efficiency of poultry with other aniiuals except for 

 the chicken. A comparison between the hen and her com- 

 petitors among the larger animals, with regard to the amount 

 of marketable product and the actual edible solids produced 

 from one hundred pounds of digestible organic material in 

 the ration, is shown in Tal)le XI. 



Tablr XI. — The Amount of HniLiN Food PRODricED from One 

 IIuNuRED Pounds of Digestible Okhanic Matter 

 IN THE Ration.' 



AninLil. Product. 



Dairj' cow Milk 



Swine Dressed carcass 



Calves Dressed carcass 



Fowls, large Live weight 



Fowls, small Live weight 



Dressed carcass 



Eggs 

 Broilers Live weight 



I3ressed carcass 

 Steers . Dressed carcass 



Sheep and lambs Dressed carcass 



' Adapted from figures given in Jordon's Feeding of Farm Animals. 



