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Show "' " ' ' "- II llll Ill POULTRY COMMERCIAL POULTRY. . I. i C. S. Gorlinc. With 'the invention of the modern incubator and brooder, hatching and rearing of poultry for profit has become be-come a science, we might almost say an exact science, and yet so simple and so easily learned that one forgets for-gets the technicalities in the absorbing absorb-ing interest and in the pleasure derived de-rived from mastering the difficulties. It has been said that poultry keeping is an occupation that may be engaged in by any one, as it requires no great ability or knowlcd'gc to make a success suc-cess of it. That is less true now than it was twenty years ago, for what would then have been called success would today be considered a failure. It is a comparatively simple thing to place a baker's dozen of eggs under most any old hen that takes a notion to sit, and in three weeks take off the hen and, any chicks she may have hatched, put them in a coop out in the orchard, just feed and water them and allow them to grow. Very simple, isn't it? Any child could do as well, and the proposition was a success and required no great ability or knowledge. Now, that is what we call the A, B, C of poultry culture. If one could sit one thousand hens and each hen would hatch six chickens, chick-ens, then there would be six thousand little chicks to take care of, besides the ten hundred lvens, and the task, instead of being so simple and easy, would become a mighty complex one requiring a great deal of skill and a vast amount of practical knowledge to make a success of the proposition. In the first place, it would be next to impossible to obtain one thousand hens that would become broody at the same time, it would' require a large amount of shed-room to accommodate accom-modate the hens and a considerable amount of care and attention to place water and feed for tluim during the three woeks of incubation and 01 good deal of trouble and expense to make the necessary coops. Now, today, it is just as simple a proposition to hatch six thousand chicks with a proper battery bat-tery of incubators rightly located as. it is to hatch one hundred' uiukr the same circumstances and far easier to 1 handle and care for them than it would be with one tenth of that number num-ber hatched by hens. This is the province pro-vince of commercial poultry rearing : poultry for profit and the business ' 3 may be carried on as extensively as one's means, ability and inclination 1 may suggest. There arc plants that J yield an annual income of more than 0 fifty thousand dollars and there arc a far greater number that yield an j income so small that the proprietor H has hard work to discover it. We have ever believed that it is both unfair un-fair and unbusinesslike to open the ledger and show only the gross pro- fits in poultry culture. The losses arc great dreadfully heavy in many casesand cas-esand so frequently overbalance the profits that the keeper becomes discouraged dis-couraged and quits the business, vowing vow-ing .there is nothing in it but trials and tribulations and loss. One of these quitters financial failures if you please will do more to discourage discour-age others from entering a field where i there is undoubtedly a fair profit and ( a vaster amount of pleasure, than is generally supposed. People as a class, do not think, until requested to do so, and! hastily jump to the conclusion con-clusion that because Mr. Jones made a failure of the poultry business, they will do likewise, when as a matter of fact, nine out of ten of them would have done better than Mr. Jones did. A commercial poultry plant is just like a bank or a mercantile establishment establish-ment in that it must have good management man-agement coupled with a complete knowledge of the (business in order to make a success. Given this and modern artificial equipment and the business is far more apt to succeed than cither a mercantile or a banking proposition, for in hard times, people will wear their old clothes and do without exchange and borrowing money, but bless you, times never get too hard to keep the public from eating, eat-ing, especially fresh eggs and spring chickens. Hie who has something good to eat or drink can always dispose dis-pose of it, and at a fair price and profit. pro-fit. The question then arises, why do so many who go in fo poultry, raising rais-ing make a failure of it, and the qucs-cion qucs-cion is easily nn.sw.ered by. asking nn dtficr" question, who "do so man fail who gO into the mercantile business? busi-ness? Success in poultry keeping does not depend upon any one thing-, but rather upon the faithful, systematic performance of many little tasks that need attention daily. Any one boy, girl, woman or man 1 who will learn the details the rudi ments, even of poultry culture can make a success of it, and derive pleasure pleas-ure and profit from a few or from many birds. The men who arc deriving de-riving the greatest profit from the poultry business today began without with-out capital, with but little if any experience ex-perience and with but ai few hens. Twenty-five yars ago we knew a boy just a common looking little freckled faced country boy who . loved chickens. He had a few common com-mon hens given him by his mother. He prized his little (lock highly and tenderly cared for all the little chicks they hatched. Daily he watched their growth and felt all the pleasure in their development that only a true fancier may feci, but alasl Whdn mid summer came and the birds looked most promising the dread disease, cholera made its appearance in the uighborhood and the little flock was soon decimated, for neither the boy nor his good mother were skilled in the care of sick birds. Failure? Yes, but the boy had true grit the kind required to make a success of the poultry business. When he attended the country fair that fall he passed the greater portion of the day in the poultry department. There he met and fell violently in love with some handsome Brown Leghorn pullets, the first he had ever seen. Oh, how he did long to possess those sprightly spright-ly little beauties if he could but dare to call them all his own but the price was high one dollar and a hall each, think of it, and our boy hadn't h dollar to his name. Give it up? Not he. Never! He learned that eggs from those birds might be had at a dollar and a half per sitting and that might be cheaper than a dollar and a half a bird, so the boy went home determined to have eggs from those birds for hatching, and he began be-gan looking for a job. It wasn't much of a country to get a job in in those days for th country was sparsely settled with great tracts of beach and sugar trees intervening and long fines Of tamarack trees edging thd swamps I which were filled with mosquitoes and malaria in the summer and" with ice and, cranberries in the winter. But when the ice would bear his weight the boy was out picking cranberries after shchool and on Saturdays and these were carefully hauled to town twelve miles away, by the tub full, and the five dimes earned in this way were -carefully hoarded and by and by a neighbor got sick and the boy was given a job of sawing wood and earned seventy five cents and when hatching time came round the precious preci-ous dollar and a half for a sitting of eggs was ready and the boy tramped away several weary miles and tramped tramp-ed back again with an empty pocket but a light heart and a small basket-of basket-of eggs. To each of his two'broody hens he gave a half of the sitting of. eggs, anJ ah, how carefully did he watch those brooding biddies for the next three weeks and when the hatching hatch-ing began he hardly dared leave them long enough to eat his meals and any one knows that it must be a very strong attraction to keep a healthy country boy away from even one uveal. But there, were fourteen little, brown chicks such pretty little things, he thought striped just like a little quail, and so sprightly and how he did love to watch them scratch and, peck at the corn bread crums he fed them. Each hen was, shut up at night in a coop with her chicks, but in spite of his cane, a hawk got one and a weasel dug under the coop and got, one or two and the rats got one or two and out of the fourteen he raised seven nice pullets and two cockerels and when the leaves grew scar and brown and the mellow Indian In-dian Summer sun glinted through the tall beach trees on the beautiful plumage plum-age of the sprightly birds that ranged at will in the beach wood pasture, the 4:oy's heart was filled with pride and he longed to see his birds in a show where others might admire them also and whan the frost gleanved white on the golden pumpkins down in the corn field and the gray squirrels romped wildly among the vines lade.-with lade.-with great clusters of wild grapes, in the snappy bracing air of one of those good old time mornings, the birds were carted away to the country coun-try fair and here our boy was doomed doom-ed to his first great disappointment for he had yet to learn that it is the early me hired birds that win at the fall fairs and while he failed to secure se-cure a ribbon, he did receive many kind words of encouragement from the older exhibitors and the complimentary compli-mentary remarks of encouragement from the older exhibitors and the complimentary remark he heard well repaid1 him for his time and trouble in showing the birds. (To be continued.) |