42 BULLETIN 341, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
products from their kitchen gardens and reported no acreage of com- __ 
mercial truck crops. In the case of both acreage and income the ~ 
number of farms is too small to permit a satisfactory comparison 
between labor income and magnitude of the trucking business, such 
as has been made above for other crops. The small number of these 
farms is itself an indication that the business is not at home here, — j 
even if the population to be supplied is very large. *| 
Poultry—The receipts from poultry and eggs constitute 82 per 
cent of the total receipts of the 378 farms. Only eight of the total i 
number reported no income from this source. From the standpoint | 
of the number of farms, this enterprise, therefore, heads the list of 
farm enterprises in this locality; that is, it is the most universally — 
found of any farm enterprise. But we have already seen that in very 
few cases do the flocks exceed 200 hens. Poultry thus constitute one 
of the more important of the minor enterprises on the farms of this 
region, as they do so generally in nearly all parts of this country. 
Do these poultry pay? They furnish a very important part of the | 
family ving, but this is not taken into account in this study. The | 
data here given relate only to the commercial phase of the business. 
if they are profitable, why do not farmers keep larger flocks? These — 
questions are quite definitely answered in the data obtained in this | 
survey, and the answer is one of great importance both to the farmer __ 
whose poultry are merely incidental to the general farm business and __ 
to the poultryman who makes of them a major enterprise. 
Percentages of income from poultry are about equally numerous — 
from 1 per cent up to about 9 per cent. Above this the numbers fall — 
off rapidly. Fifty-one farms derive more than 20 per cent of their — 
income from this source and eight farms more than 40 per cent. 
Thus, of 370 farms keeping poultry, only 8 would be classed as real 
poultry farms, while of 347 farms deriving incomes from the sale 
of dairy products, 157 are classed as real dairy farms, and that, too, 
without counting income from the sale of cows and calves. Why is _ 
the more universal poultry enterprise in nearly all cases a minor one __ 
while the somewhat less common dairy enterprise is so frequently the 
leading source of income? The figures given in Tables XIX and XX 
show the reason for this to be that when the poultry business is made __ 
a minor enterprise it is profitable, while when it rises to the dignity __ 
of a major enterprise it often becomes unprofitable or at least much 
less profitable than when it occupies a minor place on the farm. On 
the other hand, the dairy business in this region is more profitable 
as a major than as a minor enterprise. s 
Unfortunately, the number of farms in wo of the classes of Table 
XTX is quite small, but the very low average labor income in both 
these classes can hardly be regarded as insignificant. .| 
