CHAPTER V 
HOW TO BEGIN 
OR one like myself—a poultry-farmer—to advocate some- 
EF thing like universal poultry-keeping seems like ruining 
my own business, for, indeed, if even half the community 
kept a few fowls the occupation of the egg-farmer would be gone ; 
but in spite of the great increase in poultry-keeping for private 
purposes, there is little fear of this source being able to supply all 
the eggs required—at least, in my lifetime. 
There is a strong and growing desire on the part of the public 
to make a start in poultry-keeping for purely domestic purposes. 
Naturally many of these good people do not know how to proceed. 
As a rule, they have little or no difficulty about securing a decent 
poultry-house at a reasonable figure to suit their requirements, 
but the difficulty is to find laying pullets. 
A friend taking up poultry wrote to me: “I have got a nice 
poultry-house all right, but although it has been erected over a 
month it is still tenantless, The fact is, I am nervous about buying 
fowls. When I write to a first-class firm the price asked is for me 
prohib:tive, and I do not care to trust myself to the unknown 
advertiser in a poultry paper. I have, for instance, no means of 
knowing the age of a fowl—whether it is a pullet or a great, great- 
grandmother, and I am told not to purchase anything in feathers 
over twelve months old. What am I to do?” 
I fully appreciate the dilemma of my friend. In fact, I have 
been “ caught’? myself when, in thinking I was buying yearlings, 
I got two-year-old hens. It is almost impossible for the ordinary 
man to tell the difference between a one-year-old and a two-year- 
old hen ; and, indeed, many poultrymen might easily be deceived. 
One of my friends, in rather a large way of poultry-keeping, once 
answered a chance advertisement and bought a dozen so-called 
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