46 POULTRY PRODUCTION 



increased over 18 per cent, in the last ten years. (See 

 Table I.) 



This means that for some reason poultrymen, who are 

 presumably skilled in the various operations that make up 

 poultry husbandry, have failed to do on a large scale what 

 many farm folks who make no pretensions at skill are doing 

 with at least some degree of success on a small scale. 



The majority of the very many market poultry farms that 

 have been undertaken and have failed, have failed because 

 they have been unable to maintain the health and productive 

 vigor of their flocks. Where poultry is the main source of 

 income, the conditions are likely to be those of congestion, 

 and the methods of management intensive. If the land is 

 good for general farming, it is so valuable that large numbers 

 of birds must be kept on a limited area, and the labor min- 

 imized, in order that a profit may be realized above the 

 interest on the investment in the land. 



Poultry (with the exception of waterfowl), and particularly 

 chickens and turkeys, are highly susceptible to disease. 

 While chickens are gregarious, the natural covey is small, 

 and the practice of congregating large numbers on a limited 

 area permanently, renders each indi^'idual a menace to every 

 other individual, makes sweeping epidemics possible, and 

 renders it difficult, if not impossible, to keep the ranges and 

 runs green. Ground so heavily stocked as to make it bare 

 is a constant source of danger from disease infection. 



In how far general hygienic measures and highly vigorous 

 stock may be developed that will offset these dangers is yet 

 to be seen. These are problems of management and breeding 

 worthy of investigators' best efforts. 



From the broad standpoint it is interesting to compare 

 the fact that in 1910 there were in this country slightly over 

 394 fowls per square mile of improved farm land, or at the 

 rate of one fowl for each 1.6 acres. According to King,^ 

 Japan supports 825 fowls per square mile of improved farm 

 land which allows less than .8 of an acre per fowl. It would 

 appear, therefore, that the poultry population of the United 



' Farmers of Forty Centuries, 



