4.46 . QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. [1 June, 1899. 
century interested in profitable poultry-keeping, and have searched Great 
Britain and Ireland, to say nothing of France and Belgium, in vain for what is 
regarded as a poultry farm. After making these statements, however, the 
writer’s replies to the questions appear perfectly contradictory. He advises on 
the district which should be selected for poultry-farming, but if poultry farms 
are failures why advise the selection of any land for carrying them out? He 
then gives further advice on the breeds that are to be used in poultry-farming, 
but if it does not succeed as he says in the first part of his article, why enter 
into a selection of birds either for table fowl or of fanciers’ breeds for laying ? 
He next states that 1,000 birds could be kept on 10 acres of land or even less. 
I should like very much to see the balance-sheet of an establishment of the 
kind, and I am willing to go to any part of England to see one which has been 
in successful operation for any small number of years. The writer proceeds on 
the assumption that such a thing can be satisfactorily conducted, but says he 
would not advise “Reader” to venture unless he has £500 available. Can he 
inform me where I ean find a man who has begun with £500 or 1,000 hens on 
i0 acres of land who has not lost his money, or continues his farm? I have 
known myself of scores of poultry farms being attempted in England, but I 
have never known one that has ever approached success. The causes are not 
far to seek to those who choose to look for them. What are called and advertised 
as poultry farms in England are simply establishments where fancy poultry and 
eges are sold at fancy prices—the great majority being bought, not bred, for the 
purpose. I ask, and have for years asked in vain, Where is there a successful 
poultry farm? ‘Their produce is not known in the markets to where the birds 
are sent not by the farmers but by the fatteners. The advising anyone to start 
such an establishment is, to say the least, unsatisfactory. 
Mr. De La Bere writes :— 
THE NATIONAL POULTRY TEST. 
It will be in the recollection of most agriculturists and other poultry- 
keepers that the above test commenced on Ist March, 1898, and closed on the 
first of this month. As considerably over one million prints of the test circular 
were distributed through the post and press columns, itis hoped that a large 
number of results will come to hand during the next week or two, and which I 
hope to tabulate and publish later on. As considerable public interest and 
expectation exists as to these returns, perhaps you will allow me to give 
particulars of the first received, as it will be of special interest to poultry-keepers 
who are obliged to restrict the range of their poultry to very narrow limits. 
The success obtained by the flock of fowls in this return confirms the last 
paragraph of the poultry test circular, in which I said, “ My thirty years’ 
experience in poultry-keeping leads me to believe that results will be forth- 
coming from these tests calculated to both astonish and impress.” 
GtoucesTERSHIRE.—Results obtained from 1st March, 1898, to 1st March, 
1899, from twenty hens confined within a yard, 86 yards by 16. Yield of 
egos :—March, 424; April, 446; May, 441; June, 444; July, 372; August, 
308; September, 236; October, 182 ; November, 200 ; December, 143 ; January, 
222; February, 291—total, 3,709. 
Dr. £3. d. Cr. £ 8. d 
To 20 hens at 3s. each ... ‘te OS 3 0 0 By 20 hens at 2s. 64. i 210 0 
Poultry-house, 30s. ; appliances, 20 0 10 pullets reared at 3s. ... +8 110 0 
10s. 8 cockerels at 2s... ef. o 016 0 
5 per cent. interest on capital 05 0 3,709 eggs at 1s. perdozen ... 15 9 1 
Cost of corn and meal 411 0 Manure at 18d. per head og 110 0 
Green food on: 3) 0775.0 —_——_ 
Two sittings of eggs 42 es 020 2115 1 
Labour at 34 hours per wee’ sub) 4 Contra ... . ar ae bh byez) 
£1118 4 Profit, 10s. 1d. per head se #9lo uu ® 
Note.—As it is necessary that certain items should be common to each 
balance-sheet, to fairly compare one return with another, I have fixed the price 
of each flock of fowls subjected to the test as though they were purchased in at 
