PRAIRIE FARMER'S POULTRY BOOK 



becomes better established and more widely known the market 

 for good cockerels is enlarged. There is not so much chance to 

 sell pullets to the farm trade, as most people find it cheaper to 

 buy eggs and hatch their own pullets. 



These statements do not refer to the breeders with fancy 

 strains. The business of producing the fancy strains of poultry 

 is a specialized industry by itself and hardly comes under a 

 discussion of marketing of farm poultry. 



The methods described in this article are those found 

 practical by farmers and farm women who run their poultry 

 business purely as a sideline, though any sideline to be profit- 

 able must be efiRciently handled. The improved methods of 

 marketing poultry and eggs which are described here help 

 promote that efficiency and make possible profits where losses 

 existed before, and make greater profits where there were 

 small profits. 



The man who wins in any branch of farming during the 

 years following the war will be the one who farms most 

 efficiently. And one of the chief factors in efficient farming 

 is marketing products to the best advantage. 



w 



N6 Eight-Hour Day for Esgar's Hens 



HEN W. J. Esgar of Grundy county, 111., gets the fire 

 built about half past five on a cold winter morning he 

 hurries down to the chicken house to call the hens. The way 

 he calls them is to turn on the electric lights. Unlike the 

 hired man, the hens never turn over in bed for another wink. 

 They get off the roosts at once and go after their breakfast 

 of sprouted oats and wheat. They get in a good two hours' 

 work before daylight, and by the time the late winter dawn is 

 waking up chickens who go by sun time, Esgar's hens have 

 their crops full and are ready to go to laying. 



"The value of this extra two hours' work by electric light 

 is that the hens have just that much more time to eat, and 

 they lay in proportion to the amount of feed they consume," 

 says Esgar. "When a hen is eating she is making you money. 

 When she is sleeping, especially in the morning with an 

 empty crop, she isn't." 



Esgar is a firm believer in poultry as a profitable branch 

 of the farm business. He doesn't believe in leaving all the 



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