INSTRUCTION IN POULTRY HUSBANDRY 5 



a week can be profitably spent in this way. Often the actual 

 work of caring for the birds on the school grounds and of 

 building equipment creates so keen an interest that the 

 students will do considerable good work before and after 

 school hours. When the subject is being taught in high 

 schools, at least one, and preferably two, laboratory hours 

 should be on the schedule. Another procedure that has been 

 very successful is to combine two or three of the upper classes. 

 Nature study and poultry can be grouped as one class. This 

 materially decreases the labor of teaching and stimulates 

 interest, because all of the students are brought together on 

 the same plane, studying a subject that is of mutual interest. 

 In arranging the schedule, it may be possible to include 

 some other agricultural subject, such as horticulture or school 

 gardening, allowing three hours a week for poultry, and three 

 or four, as the case may be, to the correlated subject. 



General Advice to the Teachers. — The instructor in 

 agricultural subjects, especially in poultry keeping, is often 

 poorly trained and inexperienced in poultry husbandry, 

 and therefore should not set himself or herseK up as an 

 authority on the subject, but rather study with the student 

 and be a pupil with him. This brings them into closer rela- 

 tion and inspires a more personal interest on the part of 

 the student. It is wise to begin with local conditions, and 

 attempt gradually to improve these, rather than to make 

 radical suggestions or departures from the methods prevail- 

 ing in the district. Any radical step of this kind on the 

 part of the teacher is apt to arouse the antagonism of the 

 parents, and thus lessen the interest of the student. Work 

 can be confined to local problems; for example, if the dis- 

 trict happens to be one where egg production predominates 

 this phase of the work should be given special consideration. 

 In some sections market poultry in the form of broilers and 

 roasters had better be taken up, because the parent, hence 

 also the student, is interested in this phase. Often it may 



