254 MY POULTRY DAY BY DAY 
Joined in sympathy with the brooding bird, with the maternal 
impulse, with the laying hen, she is eminently fitted to carry out 
all the requirements of the business. She will revel in the day-old 
chicks, delight in the tending, feeding and care of the young, and 
rejoice in the matured pullet in its productive stage. 
Many male farmers, perhaps the majority, are not so careful, 
so painstaking as they ought to be. Some of them, I speak with 
experience, are only too content to go by rule of thumb when exact 
science is required. In feeding there is more necessary than weight 
and measure, and not all poultry-farmers are exact in this respect. 
Many feed with the most perfunctory attention (or none at all) to 
the wants of the birds. A woman may or may not be more careful, 
according to her training, but if she is taught that certain things 
are necessary she is not likely to overlook them. Devotion to 
detail is more characteristic of the female than of the male. She 
is more cautious and will not take risks. She may not be more 
observant naturally, but training will do much for her there, ‘and 
once she is taught what is necessary there is little of moment that 
will escape her. 
The mixing of food seems such a small thing to the average 
masculine mind, but the whole super-structure of poultry-farming 
is built upon this most essential process. The wrong ingredients, 
the wrong proportions, the wrong quantity of moisture—all these 
things strike at the very roots of the poultry business. A large 
number of the failures in poultry-farming may be attributed just 
to these few considerations. There are a few things that are 
essential and the details of feeding is perhaps the most essential 
of all. Women, being Nature’s nurses, are well calculated to realise 
the importance of feeding. No other detail of a poultry farm will 
make such a difference to the entire establishment. Feed well, 
feed accurately, feed regularly, feed cleanly, and you have won 
more than half the battle. 
The care of poultry does not involve hard manual labour and 
there is no part of the business that an average healthy woman 
could not do. Even when food is bought in large quantities it is 
delivered in sacks quite manageable by an ordinary person. The 
