112 QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. [1 Ava., 1898. 
can found a poultry farm on nothing, and turn in a few hundreds the first year. 
A woman who wrote me from South Australia last week said: ‘“ You seem to think 
- that I shall be disappointed, but indeed T shall be satisfied with a very small profit. 
If Tonly make £150 the first year, it will be suflicient to induce me to go on.” When 
I tell you that the writer was starting with nine hens and avooster, you can form some 
opinion of what her chances are for that very modest £150 the first year. 
Do not exclaim, “Ah! that’s a woman all over,’ because I can quote from a 
man’s letter too, who tells me—‘* I’ve just bought fifty head of laying hens, and mean 
to try the poultry racket. Eges are never under Ls. a dozen out here, and] guess 29s. per 
week for a start will suit me all right. But, of course, I shall go in for breeding a 
lot more. I guess poultry is an all-right game” What he thought later on I have 
not yet heard; but probably he did not find poultry quite such an “all-right game,” 
when he found that his fifty head of hens did not produce the fifty eggs every day. 
Both these writers resembled Jed Watson, who— 
Had a faith that urged him on, through all life’s wastes and fens, 
That he could build a fortune up by simply raising hens; - 
And those cloud-bannered palaces, reared not of stones or bricks, 
Me Were built of all the arabes of all his unhatched chicks. 
Whenever I strike a correspondent with ideas so greatly out of proportion, I take 
the trouble to copy out portions of the poem from which I quote, and enclose it by 
way of reply. If they do not understand it at first, they generally do by the end of 
the first year. It is called ‘The Hen Fever of Jed Watson,” and is by an American 
poet, and I humbly recommend it to all poultry farmers whose ideas are beyond 
possibilities. And now I am back to my starting point—‘ Will poultry pay?” “ My 
reply is—Yes, poultry will pay, if properly and systematically gone irto with some 
capital or some experience or knowledge of the matter. From £150 to £200 should 
start a poultry farm, provided the land and dwelling are on the ground. Five acres 
will make an ideal farm, divided into four or five portions—two acres to be devoted 
to growing grain and root crops for the fowls (for unless all the food is grown on the 
place it will not pay). One acre should be subdivided into, say, twenty pens or 
yards to hold twenty-five birds each, as when they arerun in small flocks they are more 
easily managed, and give a better return. On the other acre there would be 
the breeding stock, incubator house, and rearing yards, and runs for young 
stock. Four breeding-pens will be enough, and such breeds as Leghorn, Minorca, 
Langshan, and Game could be kept. But the breeds kept are a matter of fancy, as 
most people have some pet variety. The great secret is to keep only such as are 
profitable from all points. The White Leghorn and Langshan cross gives a splendid 
layer, and a yery good table bird. The Minovea is also an unrivalled layer. The 
angshan and the Game make the best of mothers, and it is best to rear the chickens 
with hens, as foster mothers are a nuisance. A hen can mother from fifty to sixty 
chicks, and do it far better. The best way is to place her in a good roomy coop with 
the chicks she has herself hatehed, and then at night place the chicks from the 
incubator with her. She will not be able to cover that number, but they will nestle 
round her, and if the nights are very cold a bottle filled with hot water wrapped in a 
bit of flannel and laid inside the coop will keep all snug and warm. A farm such as 
this will require nine months’ start before any return can be expected. In the first 
eee you must have the 500 pullets to fill the twenty-five yards, and you must 
ave a certain amount of food in hand, also you must have a reserve 
supply of pullets to replace those in the yards that ‘stop laying. Directly a hen 
gives up laying she must be remoyed to a spare yard kept for that purpose, and where 
the non-layers can be fed till they lay again. Putting everything at the lowest 
possible, I reckon such a farm would turnin £4 10s. per week, and then I am only 
allowing for one-half the hens laying at once, whereas the chances are that very 
nearly 85 per cent. would be laying if they were all of nearly an age. I myself 
have averaged £2 10s. per week from eggs with a flock of 350 Game hens kept 
in the way I describe. The great secret of success depends upon getting the utmost 
from each individual bird, and to make a poultry farm pay you must look after the 
small as well as the large details, sell eggs, table fowls, purebreds, and exhibit at the 
. local shows as well. No hen should be kept after her second year, and no unncces- 
sary roosters at all. Great capital has lately been made out of an account of Mr. Sam 
Ellis’s duck farm in New South Wales, which appeared in one of our local news- 
papers, and I know that two or three people have gone into duck-farming on 
the strength of it. But—and it is a very big but, indeed — not one person 
in a thousand would have persevered as Mr. Ellis has, and it is only after long 
years that he has struggled to success. Because Mr. Ellis happens to be 
successful to-day is not saying that he has not had to buy his experience by years of 
non-success and hard graft. Hvery scrap of knowledge as regards housing, feeding, 
