E 52 



INTRODUCTION 



In the hope of helping beginners and others of my friends in the poultry 

 business, and in response to urgent requests for a book on poultry culture from 

 my pen, I wrote a small volume three years ago. The whole edition was sold in 

 a year, and on account of the interest taken in it and the demand for some- 

 thing more, a second edition was issued. This edition is now exhausted and 

 a third edition is now offered, with additional chapters and up-to-date in- 

 formation on breeding, fireless brooders, and other new features in the poultry 

 industry. 



The book is a synopsis of many chapters of my "Woman's Work in the 

 Poultry Yard" and other talks on poultry, and embodies the personal, practical 

 experiences I have been through myself in many years of pleasant work in 

 the poultry yard. Its object is not necessarily to urge anyone into the business, 

 but to encourage and help beginners and especially newcomers, not back East 

 but on the great Pacific Coast and in the Western States, where conditions 

 differ materially from those in the East and where there is an increasingly 

 large demand for both poultry and eggs ; where the poultry business is about 

 as profitable as any that can be undertaken and a good living may be made 

 in the pure air and sunshine by any industrious man or woman. 



Having for many years been lecturer at the Farmers' Institutes in the 

 Extension Courses of the University of California, for four years instructor in 

 poultry husbandry at the poultry school of the University of California, and 

 having been editor or associate editor of four agricultural magazines and sev- 

 eral other newspapers on the Pacific Coast, many questions have during- this 

 time been propounded to me relating to the poultry business, its difficulties, the 

 troubles of poultry raisers and the ailments of fowls. Some of these questions 

 will be found in this book with the answers to them, also remedies for the dis- 

 eases or ills of fowls in this climate. 



Hoping and feeling sure that my little book, which is the only book deal- 

 ing with the climatic and other conditions "Out West," may prove a help to all 

 its readers, I am, 



Very cordially your friend, 



