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PRACTICAL EGG FARMS. 
Colony Houses at Little Compton, R. I., Showing the Cart for Food and Water. 
perous condition of things. Mr. Howland 
doesn’t advertise because he has nothing to 
sell. He manufactures eggs and the market 
takes all he can produce, and pays him cash for 
them, and his farm is an egg-farm and nothing 
else—no side issues, nothing to interfere with 
the production of eggs. 
MR. WILBUR’S GREAT POULTRY FARM. 
The Colony Plan and Rhode Island Reds. 
A poultry farm which carries four thousand 
head of laying stock may fairly be considered 
“great.” In fact, we believe it is the greatest 
we have ever visited or heard of, and as we 
think we should have heard of it if there had 
been one larger, we will assume that this is the 
largest poultry farm in the United States; and 
is, consequently, the largest in the world. It 
goes without saying that the United States is a 
long way ahead of every other country in poul¬ 
try culture, hence what is greatest in poultry 
here is the greatest in the world. Isaac Wilbur, 
Esq., of Little Compton, R. I., is the poultry 
farmer we have in mind, and his poultry farm 
and poultry business, the result of thirty or 
more years of growth, is the subject of our 
sketch. 
Mr. Wilbur did not begin life as the tradition¬ 
al poor boy, nor did he buy his farm with a 
small payment down and a big mortgage. His 
farm of two hundred acres has been the home 
of the Wilburs for many generations, and the 
men of the family have been prominent citizens— 
his grandfather, whose name he bears, having 
been governor of the state and a leader in public 
affairs in his day. A man of culture and refine¬ 
ment himself, Mr. Wilbur is a type of the best 
class of farmer-citizen of America, the “solid 
men” of our country. 
Forty years ago Mr. Wilbur farmed by the 
old methods, beef for market being his main 
stay, for which business his excellent natural- 
grass land is well adapted. Every farmer kept 
a flock of hens in those days, chiefly for eggs 
and poultry meat for the table, and some eggs 
and dressed poultry were each year sold to 
market. As Mr. Wilbur is a dozen miles from 
a railroad and four miles from a steamboat 
wharf, he saw the advantage of a concentrated 
market product, decided to keep two flocks of 
fowls instead of one, and built a second house 
for the other flock. There were “croakers” 
even in those days, and one conservative neigh¬ 
bor remonstrated with him for his foolishness in 
building a second poultry house. “Why,” 
said he, “you’ll glut the market with eggs, 
you’ll knock the bottom all out of the business 
with over production!” As Mr. Wilbur’s two 
houses have increased to a hundred, and as, 
influenced by his example and encouraging 
words, many of his townsmen are doing like¬ 
wise, and selling their eggs to him, until Mr. W. 
handles and ships one hundred and thirty 
thousand to one hundred and fifty thousand 
dozen eggs in a year, the croaker would seem 
to have been shortsighted. 
Mr. Wilbur keeps the fowls on the colony plan, 
housing about forty head in a house 8 x 10 or 
8 x 12 feet in size, these houses being about one 
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