Preface 



THIS book is written to help farmers make more money 

 from their poultry flocks. 



Success with poultry on the farm depends on intelligent 

 care and feeding. Any farmer or farmer's wife, or farm boy 

 or girl, who will study the methods described in this book, and 

 follow them carefully, can make the farm poultry flock a 

 highly profitable enterprise. We have endeavored not only 

 to point out profitable methods, but also to indicate dangers 

 and pitfalls to be avoided. 



Any branch of farming is always more interesting if we 

 know the "why" of things. We have therefore devoted some 

 space to a discussion of the scientific principles that lie back 

 of successful poultry methods, in order that the reader may 

 understand the wonderful process by which nature produces 

 eggs and meat through the medium of the hen. 



The farm flock represents fully 80 per cent of the poultry 

 industry. Ninety per cent of all farms produce poultry. The 

 value of all chickens and eggs produced in 1919 was 

 $1,047,989,919. These figures do not represent the full magni- 

 tude of the industry, for they do not include fowls other than 

 chickens, such as turkeys, ducks and geese, nor poultry 

 produced on small estates. A safe estimate of the annual 

 production of poultry and eggs in the United States is 

 $1,500,000,000. 



For this large asset to the nation the farmer and his family 

 deserve great credit. As the farmer himself is usually occu- 

 pied in the larger and heavier tasks of the farm, the care of 

 the poultry generally falls to the farmer's wife or upon the 

 daughter or son, or possibly some elderly member of the 

 household. This is possible because the task does not require 

 heavy manual labor. Wherever the task falls it means 

 constant attention to minute details and a high degree of 

 knowledge and skill. To help solve some of the problems 

 which will surely present themselves is our aim. 



