274 



COMMERCIAL POULTRY RAISING 



hatcheries ship from a quarter to a half milHon chicks in a season, 

 while scores of smaller plants turn out numbers varying from 

 twenty thousand to a hundred thousand chicks. 



It is doubtful if any enterprise could make the enormous growth 

 of the day-old-chick trade within such a short space of time, unless 

 it possessed some peculiar advantages. That is the secret of the 



success of the chick trade — it has 

 unique advantages, and natural 

 ones. 



The first poultryman stumbled 

 over them, but even he did not 

 see the commercial possibilities 

 at the time. His awakening was 

 not so much in the baby chick, 

 as in the realization of the extent 

 to which farmers and poultry 

 keepers generally were disgusted 

 with their own efforts in trying to 

 hatch eggs. The opportunity to 

 purchase chicks already hatched 

 filled a long-felt want, unques- 

 tionably the greatest want in the 

 poultry industry. It ran counter 

 to the familiar proverb — "^ Never 

 count your chickens before they 

 are hatched," of which everyone 

 who had struggled with the 

 mechanics of an incubator or 

 the eccentricities of a perverse hen, had the fullest appreciation. 

 Specialization. — What is even of greater importance, the chick 

 trade is an application of the principle of specialization. It is 

 generally admitted that the man who devotes all his time, energy 

 and thought to one thing exclusively is likely to become more 

 skillful in that particular line than the man who must do the same 

 thing and a dozen others besides. The poultryman who pro- 

 duces baby chicks is a specialist. He has trained himself for 



(Courtesy Smith Standard Company) 



Fig. 174. — One of the incubating 

 rooms in a hatchery of 600,000 egg 

 capacity. 



