CHAPTER VIII 

 KEEPING RECORDS 



Know Where You Stand. — To have an accurate understanding 

 of one's position or progress in any line of work it is essential 

 to keep accounts. Conducting a poultry farm is no different 

 from any other enterprise in this respect. To raise chickens 

 intelligently and profitably, one must consider, precisely, such 

 factors as labor, feed, the number of eggs laid by different flocks, 

 cost of equipment, housing and so on. Haphazard, hit-or-miss, 

 guess-work methods belong to the time when chickens were 

 raised as a by-product of the farm, merely to supply the home 

 table with a few tempting viands. Such methods are inexcus- 

 able to-day; they are shiftless. 



Imagine the confusion that would exist if the general run of 

 business houses attempted to conduct their affairs without some 

 system of book-keeping. It is hardly likely they would survive 

 a week. Yet it is safe to say the general run of poultry raisers 

 are very lax in this respect, many of them keeping no records 

 whatever, not even a memorandum of their feed bills. They 

 have no way of telling whether their hens are an asset or a lia- 

 bility, or what it costs to produce a dozen eggs or a pound of 

 meat. For all they know, it may be cheaper to buy poultry 

 products at the store. 



Leaks. — Farms specializing in poultry products, progressive 

 poultrymen, must have a definite knowledge of the performance 

 of their flocks, and what it costs to maintain that performance. 

 Experienced breeders, those who helped to make poultry raising 

 a billion dollar industry, and thus take front rank in the country's 

 industrial activities, laid the foundation of their success on the 

 leaks and shortcomings that were detected by some system of 



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