92 POULTRY CULTURE 



breeding stock is given grass yards of such size that the birds do not 

 keep the grass down, and the young stock to be retained can be grown 

 each year on fresh ground, without overcrowding their range, young 

 birds which are to be marketed may be grown, and laying stock kept, 

 under intensive conditions, without marked falHng off in results, for a 

 term of years the duration of which will be determined by the charac- 

 ter of the soil and the attention given to maintaining sanitary con- 

 ditions. Whether, when cost of equipment and labor are considered, 

 it pays to adopt intensive methods for laying stock and market poul- 

 try is determined in each case by the circumstances in that case. 



Fig. 97. Summer arrangement of colony houses at Macdonald College 

 (Photograph from the college) 



In the growing of soft roasters, one of the most profitable 

 branches of poultry culture, the methods used are in some respects 

 so intensive that when first published they were received by poul- 

 trymen generally with incredulity. But the soft-roaster growers 

 in the South Shore district (with a very few exceptions) do not 

 practice continuous poultry culture. As originally developed, the 

 business ^ was exclusively the growing, under intensive conditions, 



1 This business, as developed in this district, is a fine example of an efficient 

 extemporaneous and informal organization of producers. The farmers keep the 

 breeding stock, selling eggs for hatching to the growers from about midsummer 

 until about midwinter. The price paid was for many years fifty cents a dozen, 

 but of late years sixty cents has been the standard price. A large grower usually 

 requires the eggs of a number of farm flocks, and contracts for them in advance. 

 As the eggs from the farms having the best reputation for furnishing fertile 



