268 MY POULTRY DAY BY DAY 
labour would work out approximately at 30s. per week for the 
same number of birds. Here is a huge profit in itself. One might 
as well use the old hand-loom for weaving as adopt small houses 
and wet feeding for commercial egg-farming. To succeed one must 
move wth the times and accept with thankfulness all labour- 
saving devices. If one does not do so, if one will adopt the 
methods of a quarter of a century ago, it is not fair to blame 
failure on the poultry industry. Success at any game or in any 
business presupposes an acceptance of the most scientific (say 
the most profitable) methods. 
One would imagine that the opening and shutting of doors was 
a matter of no importance, but it can be shown that on a large egg 
farm, say, with 5000 fowls on the old style, there would be some 
500 doors and gates to open and shut several times per day. Five 
hundred doors multiplied by four would result, in the opening and 
shutting thereof, in no fewer than 2000 actions per day or 14,000 
per week. And doors have a habit of being troublesome at times. 
The wood swells with the wet weather, they fail to fit or the lock 
goes wrong and there is all the bother of getting things right again. 
On a modern egg farm of the same size there would be from 
50 to 100 doors and gates—even the larger number reducing 
the work to one-fifth for this apparently trivial matter. And 
everything else is on the same scale of labour-saving. But indeed 
there are now no very large farms where the small housing system 
isadopted. It has been found unworkable, but it is still adhered to 
by the majority of moderate-sized poultry-keepers. The cleaning of 
the small house also multiplies labour indefinitely. It is practically 
as easy to scrape the dropping-boards where 100 birds have slept for 
the night as it is to clean the place where 20 fowls have roosted. 
But dry-mash feeding, the greatest labour-saving contrivance 
of all, is still repudiated by the majority of poultry-keepers, the 
majority being small men for the most part. As soon as the 
stock runs into thousands dry mash must be instituted if the con- 
cern is to be run to advantage. I know of one egg farm where 
dry mash, large houses and all other labour-saving devices are 
adopted as a matter of course, and in this particular instance the 
