AMERICAN POULTRY INDUSTRY 



clueively for hatching. Nor do they use a hen for brooding — 

 not one. Their incubator cellars and brooding houses are built 

 on the latest patterns and are as reliable, generally speaking, 

 as an eight-day clock. They have far less trouble with their 

 incubators and brooding apparatus than they have to make sure 

 that the vigor and stamina of their stock are maintained. In- 

 breeding and close confinement are decidely more threatening 

 than any dangers that arise from the incubating and brooding 

 apparatus. Much credit is due the incubator inventors and 

 manufacturers of the country (this is especially true of America) 

 for keeping pace with the demands of the progressive poultry- 

 men who desired to establish large plants and could not have 

 done so were it not for the improvement in the apparatus they 

 must use. 



Practically all of the large egg farms and broiler plants now 

 use incubators and employ brooding houses for rearing the 

 chicks. Hen's eggs hatch in incubators even better than duck's 

 eggs, and numerous plants are in operation that require ten to 

 twenty-five thousand eggs, including hen's and duck's eggs, 

 every thirty days, in order to fill the machines. There are more 

 than fifty poultry plants doing business in this country at the 

 present time that use enough incubators to require five to thirty 

 thousand eggs every three or four weeks. These plants could 

 not exist if they had to depend on the hen-method of hatching 



PORTABLE COLONY HOUSE 



An English type of portable colony house recommended by Prof. 

 Edward Brown, of Reading College. 



and raising chicks. An incubator is ready for work whenever 

 fertile eggs can be obtained. It is far easier to induce hens to 

 lay out of season than to persuade them to sit before they want 

 to. They will lay long before they want to. They will lay long 

 before they become broody, and by breeding in line for egg pro- 

 duction we now have flocks of hens that average one hundred 

 and fifty to two hundred eggs per year, where, according to the 

 census returns of 1890 and 1900 the average American hen lays 

 less than one hundred eggs per year. Estimate for yourself 

 the great addition there will be to the national wealth of this 

 and other countries when the average egg yield of all hens that 

 are kept for laying purpose is increased fifty to seventy-five eggs 

 per annum. MilUons of dozens of eggs are now produced and 

 sold so readily that they are like wheat in the granary or cash 

 in the bank; once the work of the methodical poultryman be- 



comes the common property of the poultry keepers of the farm 

 and village, then the annual egg production of the nation will 

 be increased 25 to 75 per cent and the national wealth will be 

 increased in this important extent. The real importance of 

 this national opportunity lies beyond our comprehension, for 

 figures, when they mount into millions, are baffling, and this 

 increase of the egg yield is a problem of that kind. 



IMPROVED POULTRY PRODUCTS IN DEMAND 



Increase of wealth and population has resulted in a steadily 

 increasing demand for the finest products of the poultryman's 

 art. Wealthy famlies, fashionable clubs, leading hotels and 

 high-class restaurants now compete for the guaranteed strictly 

 fresh eggs and gilt-edged dressed poultiy of the expert and 

 dependable poultryman almost regardless of price, in fact, they 

 will pay what they have to pay in order to get what they want, 

 and they want the very best that can be produced, so that' now 

 we have not only broilers weighing one pound to two pounds 

 each, but "squab" broilers weighing only three-fourths of a 

 pound to a pound, and have roasters weighing five pounds each, 

 that readily bring twenty to thirty cents per pound; also green 

 duokUngs that .start early in April at thirty to thirty-five cents per 

 pound and range down to twelve cents late in August when the 

 season closes. Strictly fresh eggs guaranteed bring a premhim of 

 five to ten cents per dozen above current prices. Expert poultry- 

 men tag oi stamp their specially choice products, wrap them 

 neatly in tissue paper, tie them with dainty ribbons and get 

 "a price and a half" for them, as compared with the ordinary 

 grade of stock placed on sale; and the "professional" egg-farmer 

 stamps his eggs with the dates on which they were laid, with the 

 name of his farm, or with his initials, puts these eggs in one- 

 dozen or two-dozen pasteboard boxes, guarantees them "strictly 

 fre,sh" and obtains a, satisfactory reward for his enterprise. 



Despite the greatly increased production, the prices of 

 poultry and eggs have been higher the last year or two than ever 

 before in the history of the industry. Increased wealth and 

 population account for this, for it is a fact that in the eastern 

 states where the production of poultry and eggs is greatest, the 

 prices invariably range from fifty to one hundred per cent higher 

 than they do in the great agticultural districts, where the popu- 

 lation is much less per square mile and the cities are smaller. 



Only a few years ago the man who went into the poultry 

 business, or talked of going into it, was considered a crank, 

 while incubators were looked on as fakes, or as a fad. Every 

 year, recently, has seen the business of poultry production 

 steadily improve, reaching a higher plane and resting on a ipore 

 substantial basis, while the manufacture of goods for poi^try- 

 men, including practical, reliable incubators and brooders, handy 

 time, labor and money-saving appliances and helpful poultry 

 supplies of various kinds has become a permanent and substan- 

 tial business. The men who are in the poultry business today, 

 or who contemplate taking it up as a means to a livelihood, un- 

 questionably have befoi% them opportunities that will tax their 

 enterprise and call in play all the ability and energy at their 

 command. The poultry business, in all its important branches 

 is at present "a man's business," and we are pleased to observe 

 that men of ability and of means are "taking hold" in sufficient 

 numbers. If these words should chance to be read ten or twenty 

 years hence, the middle-aged reader, if endowed with a good 

 memory, will give us credit for being a wise prophet, when as a 

 matter of fact we merely have noted a few of the plain "signs 

 of the times" that point out the direction of future achievement 

 and rapid progress. 



11 



