WOMEN AS POULTRY-FARMERS 255 
heaviest sacks—240 Ib. of wheat or maize—can be stored at once 
into iron or wooden bins and taken out in pailfuls as required. 
A sack of oats weighs 160 Ib. and all other meal stuffs, such as 
bran and middlings, are delivered in one-cwt. bags. I never have 
occasion to lift anything weighing more than one ewt. and that 
only from one part of the food-shed to another. 
Nor is there any very disagreeable work to do. Scraping the 
dropping-boards is a comparatively clean operation, and though 
it is the least agreeable of all poultry work it is an occupation that 
no healthy person would shrink from. I have known women of 
education and refinement do all the rough work of a poultry farm 
and think nothing about it, and I have in mind particularly one 
lady of title who for some years did everything with her own hands 
on a small poultry farm. 
Taking the rough with the smooth, poultry-farming will compare 
favourably with general farming or gardening. With poultry the 
work is not nearly so hard as with gardening, and one is less exposed 
to the weather. Modern poultry-keeping on anything like a big 
scale means large fowl-houses that offer a protection to the worker 
as well as to the birds. Fully one half of the work is done under 
cover and one can often choose times of rough weather for the 
indoor occupation. 
There is nothing in poultry-farming that a woman of refinement 
may not do, while all the time there are matters that will interest 
her and keep her enthusiasm alive. One does not need to be a 
lover of fowls to take up the industry, but those who are naturally 
attracted to the business will no doubt find it more agreeable. I 
have known many instances, however, where the beginner was 
absolutely indifferent to the work, only to find the interest grow 
until it spread into the enthusiastic devotion of the specialist. 
When a farm grows big enough to need hired labour it will, of 
course, be the object of the owner to reserve to herself the more 
difficult and technical parts of the business and leave the rougher 
and less desirable work to the assistant. The most essential de- 
partment of poultry-farming is the breeding, hatching and rearing, 
and all this a woman can undertake in a spirit of enthusiasm. 
