114 THE BEGINNER IN POULTRY 



off." It is utterly discouraging, and the chief pull on 

 the courage is the fact that, so long as he does not know 

 what the cause may be, the worker has no warrant that 

 the next lot will do any better. There are so many un- 

 expected happenings all along the way, that the poultry 

 worker must, above all things, be a student and an 

 observer of conditions. If he does not know, he must 

 learn how to diagnose every difficulty that may arise. 

 The very best teachers, full of eagerness to impart the 

 wisdom of which they are supposed .also to be so full, 

 cannot tell him everything, in detail. A principle is 

 worth more to him than a hundred details, if he have 

 judgment; if lacking this, he is not the one to succeed 

 soon with poultry. 



There are many methods which can be described ; 

 good ones, and successful. Every novice asks first 

 and most insistently for methods. It takes a big book 

 to give methods, when a very small one would give 

 the underlying principles. But, after a flock is acci- 

 dentally poisoned, or is gripped by some hidden foe 

 of which one knows nothing, neither methods nor prin- 

 ciples are of much avail. The key to the situation is 

 foreknowledge, and that is of no avail after the crisis 

 is upon one. Its work must be all put in as preventive 

 detail, or preventive principle. It is just at this point 

 that most inexperienced poultry raisers and very many 

 who have been in the work for years, make their worst 

 errors ; they do not exercise forethought. This seems 

 a difficult thing to learn to do. Somehow, the experi- 

 ence and the advice of others who have made mistakes, 

 cannot be adopted and adapted in advance, by learners 

 in the way. When these later workers have fallen into 



