THE CHICK BOOK 



75 



is paying for soft roasting chicks 37 cents per pound, and 

 be lias three separate buyers offering 30 cents a pound alive 

 at his door. All the male birds have been caponlz^d and 

 cannot fail to suit the most fastidious market in the coun- 

 try, namely, Boston. 



Jealous neighbors are telling Mr. Jordan and his fore- 

 man that they cannot repeat their this season's success 

 another year. Whether they can or not, of courise, time 

 only will tell, but Mr. Young is very confident, and we think 

 with good reason, that if given the same conditions, he can 

 repeat the success and better it in some particulars. We 

 would offer him only a few suggestions — that a little more 



elbow room be given the growing stock and a number of 

 the three hundred and sixty-five broad acres which Mr. Jor- 

 dan owns be added to the yards now used in oaring for the 

 birds after they leave the brooder house. We suggest also 

 that they be allowed to pick their own clover Instead of 

 bringing it to them. Good grazing land is, in our opinion, 

 aiB important to the successful and cheap growing of poultry 

 as to that of any other class of stock. Good birds have no 

 opportunity to develop on a sand bank, and should not oe 

 forced to exist there. Bugs and worms make up a large 

 part of their living and these are not to be foun'd without 

 plenty of good grass for them to grow among. 



PROFITABLE ROASTING CHICKENS. 



How Large, Sott-Meated Chickens Are Produced tor the Season of High Prices— The Advantage of the Balanced 

 Ration — Caponlzing the Males to Be Sold as Roasters — A Profitable Adjunct on the Farm. 



By A, F. Hunter. 



THAT there is a goodly profit in growing soft roasting 

 chickens foi- market is very evident to the student 

 of poultry conditions, and there are many poultry 

 growers who maintain that the turning of eggs into 

 chickens and growing them to soft-roaster size Is not only 

 the most profitable, but is the most satisfactory line of poul- 

 try work. When talking one time with Mr. Rankin about the 

 profitableness of poultry work, we stated that we could make 

 three dollars profit in a year from a pullet that came to lay- 

 ing maturity in October, laid one hundred and fifty to one 

 hundred and seventy-five eggs within a year, and then was 

 sold to market. "Yes," said Mr. Rankin, "and I can make for- 

 ty dollars a year profit ttom the same bird, by turning her 

 eggs into chickens and growing them to market size." As ex- 

 perienced growers estimate that there is a hundred per cent 

 profit in the business, it would need that eighty chickens 

 be grown to roaster' size and average to. sell at a dollar each 

 to give the forty dollars profit Mr. Rankin said he could 

 make, and as an experienced poultry grower recently told 

 ijie he planned to raise about two thousand chickens a year, 

 and that they cleaned up about one thousand dollars a year 

 profit, apparently Mr. Rankin's forty dollars a year profit 

 per hen, if her eggs are turned into chickens and the chick- 

 ens grown to soft-roasters, is reasonable. 



Obviously the price at which the chickens are sold has 

 not a little to do with the amount of profit in the business, 

 and as soft-roasting chickens are highest in price in May 

 and June, with March, April, July and August giving good 

 prices, it is the chickens raised especially for marketing 

 during those months that pay the best profits. In the an- 

 nual circular of Messrs. Rudd & Son, of Boston, the prices 

 tor roasters were given as follows: 



Month. Prices. 



January 15 to 20c 



February 20 to 22c 



March 20 to 25c 



April 20 to 25c 



May 25 to 30c 



June 30 to 40c 



July 36 to 25c 



August • 20 to 23c 



September 14 to 20o 



October, November and December 12 to 18c 



It takes four or five months to grow a chicken to from 

 four to six pounds weight, and with May and June giving 

 the highest prices, it is evident that the chickens should be 

 hatched in January and February to be grown for market- 

 ing in the months of highest prices. As a matter of fact, 

 we find soft-roaster growers hatching their chickens all 

 through the late fall and winter, as the supply of hatchable 

 eggs permits, and they are marketing the chickens all along 

 from March to July, as the demand of the market and the 

 condition of the chickens warrants. 



In a great poultry growing section of South Jeriey 

 there are chickens hatched late, say in June and July, and 

 grown to an average size of about six pounds, or as large as 

 they can be grown and still retain the "soft" condition of 

 flesh, then dressed for market; if the market conditions do 

 not warrant their being sold at once they are put in cold- 

 storage and held until wanted. An illustration of this I saw 

 at the poultry shipping depot of Mr. Thomas Allen, in Feb- 

 ruary, 1902. Mr. Allen's teams had brought in about 

 two tons of soft-roasting chickens that day, and they 

 were being packed in barrels to go into cold-storage to await 

 the market demand. Mr. Allen told me he had paid one 

 man that day forty dollars for thirty- three birds, an average 

 of about one dollar and twenty cents apiece, and he said 

 those birds were probably hatched in July, which would 

 make them about seven months old when killed for market. 



Visiting the great poultry section south of Boston last 

 November I found poultrymen with one to two thousand 

 chickens already out, started on the road to become soft- 

 roasters. The Messrs. i'arrar Brothers, of Assinippi, had 

 over two thousand chickens then, and were going on to 

 about forty-five hundred, which is their usual pumber; the 

 Jordan Farm had then over a thousand growing and were 

 hatching right along. The Messrs. Farrar get their chickens 

 to from four to six pounds weight, and report their highest 

 price last season as thirty-two cents, with an average for the 

 whole season of about twenty-five cents a pound. At that 

 average price their birds sold for one dollar to one dollar 

 and fifty cents apiece, with a mean price of one dollar and 

 twenty-five cents apiece, and something like fifty per cent 

 of that may be fairly estimated as profit; in other words, 



