A MAN WHO FOUND HLALTH AND COMPETE.NCL IN POULTRY. 69 



A printer, a young man whose bealtb was far from robust, had to leave the office in the 

 city iind return to the farm. There the care of poultry was assigned him as "light work," 

 most suitable for one lu his condition. He became interested enough to leave the farm and 

 go to work for one of the leading poultrymen. Continuing with him for several years he 

 became proficient both as a poultryman and a fancier, and embarked in the business for him- 

 self. He soon made a reputation as a breeder. It occurred to him that an article he was 

 making for use in his own yards would sell well to poultrymen generally. He began to adver- 

 tise it, and soon his trade in it called for the erection of a factory. In a few years more he had 

 a large and profitable business in the manufacture and sale of an article of a kind used in every 

 poultry yard. 



A mecbanic, who was probably born a fancier, has but a small back yard in which to keep 

 fowls. He can keep but a very lew, and can raise chickens only with such difBculty that he 

 prefers not to try to grow them at all. His method of handling poultry is rather unique. 

 When he sees an opportunity to buy a small lot of nice fowls cheap, from someone who is going 

 out of tbem, he buys. These fowls he keeps until a customer comes along who will pay a good 

 price for them. Then he selU, and his yard is enipl^v until another opportunity to buy low 

 occurs. He has told me that he frequently has three or four different kinds of fowls in a year, 

 though no two kinds at the same time, and that he makes much more in this way than he 

 could by breeding or keeping one lot of fowls permanently in his narrow premises. 



I could go on indefinitely, multiplying illustrations of what people have done and are doing 

 with poultry. The most common type — the farm poultry keeper — has hardly been men- 

 tioned. The illustrations given nearly all refer to specialists of various kinds and grades — to 

 people who go into poultry keeping. On the farms generally, poultry is kept as a matter of 

 course, but as we consider the possible results from poultry in the succeeding section there will 

 be occasion to say more of farm conditions and possibilities. 



