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Show POULTRY 1 - . , - i. COMMERCIAL POULTRY. C. S. Gorlinc. IV. A little to the cast of the center of the State of Nebraska lives a man who has been engaged in the poultry business for thirty years. He began be-gan life as a farm lad, and later was a school teacher, with poultry as a hobby. He also, is fortunate in having hav-ing a wife who could and did lift a helping hand, and together they elinied the fancier's highway, with ever a straight road of honor behind them and a record for square dealing, that has brought them an annual business of eight thousand dollars, a comfortable living and a great deal of pleasure. Susie Bruncr was a stenographer in the freight department of a great railway corporation. Her boss, the Chief Clerk, was a chicken-crank, and forever talking about his fine Wyandottcs. Susie listened, and became be-came interested. She didn't know a chicken from a turkey, perhaps, but she was capable and willing to learn, and invested fifty cents in a poultry journal, icach number of which she read with care and ever increasing interest. Her home was situated in a big orchard on the outskirts of the town where her father was employed in a department store. From her reading, and from hearing the Chief Clerk talk. Susie contracted a severe se-vere attack of "henosis," or hen fever, and became most anxious to own a dozen or more different breed's tuid have them all housed nicely in the big orchard, but the Chief Clerk explained ex-plained that while her desire was most natural, experience had demonstrated demon-strated that one ferccd well cared for was all sufficient, and thereupon recommended re-commended the Wyandottcs as the 1 articular brcd best adapted to her requirements. Now, Susie had a head of her own, n'd considerable exec-utivc exec-utivc ability, u she reasoned thus: if I began with Wyandottcs, I will have to compete with many experienced experi-enced breeders with established reputations, repu-tations, and if I am to have but one breed, it should be a popular one, and one with wliich I will not have so much competition. This she stated to the Chief Clerk, who at once saw the point, and agreed with her. . Now, j which breed should it be? Susie at- tended a poultry show and tried to figure it out. She looked at the i whites and blacks and reds and buffs, (j and then she slopped, or in front of her was a pen of Bud Orpingtons. She noted their size larger than Rocks good shape, good sitters, good mothers, good layers, and in-quiry in-quiry developed the fact good dis- I position gentle and easily confined. That settled it. She selected the names of all Buff Orpington breeders breed-ers she could find and wrote a letter ' to each, requesting price for a trio with score-icard of each bird -by a competent poultry judge. She re- ! ceived replies from all of the breed- J ers, but only a few could supply her with birds that had been scored1, and those who could were the only ones bhc gave consideration. You see she did not want to take any -chances and if she received a signed card by a competent judge that the birds scored so high, she was very apt to get what she paid for. Well, she selected se-lected the highest scoring birds offered, of-fered, paying a price for thcini that almost took her breath away what do you think one hundred and fifty dollars three months salary; no wonder the cold chills ran up and down her back; no wonder she took good care to conceal from friends and relatives how deeply she had gone into this venture lest they should subject hqr to ridicule "A fool and his money arc soon parted," etc. Her father, who was her confidante, even gravely shook his head, but when the birds arrived, his opinion changed. "Susie," he said, they arc the finest chickens I ever saw and I believe you will make good with them. Then Father became interested interest-ed and helped fix up nice quarters for tit chickens in the old orchard near . the house, and then there was rivalry between he and Susie ns to wl.ich should give them the most attention. Even "Mother took pleasure in showing show-ing Susie's chickens to their fric.ids. The hatching time came on and a common hen or two wore 'borrowed from a neighbor and all of the Orpington Or-pington .fggs were carefully saved and set. lrom the chicks raised that year and with her trio Susie won seven prizes and at the beginning of the following breeding season she sold three of the cockerels for twenty-five dollars each, two trios for tiventy-five dollars each, and a pen I of one cockerel and four pullets for fifty dollars. Then, during the hatch-1 hatch-1 ing season she sold something over I sKvcnty-fivc dollars worth of eggs, and now she began to write bright ) things from her chicken experience for the poultry journals and soon they offered her advertising space in exchange for her work. Father jj was helping, and the next season they raised' a fine lot of birds, and Susie's free advertising helped to sell them and that year she realized I something over five hundred dollars from her sales over and above the i cost of feeding. Not much, you say! I No, but it was almost as much sis i she earned in the drudgery of an of fice, working from 8 a. m. until 6 p. in. every day in the week, and afforded af-forded her a fund' of pleasure and needed out of door recreation that was worth it all. The foregoing excerpts are not fairy stories, but real everyday occurrences oc-currences that with dozens of others have conic under the writer's obscr-..vation obscr-..vation covering a period of many years, and arc related simply to show the possibilities of the poultry industry, in-dustry, and which arc not confined to any one section, but arc common to all parts of America. It is of little lit-tle benefit to the average reader to learn that the value of poultry products pro-ducts is greater than the value of the wheat crop, running into millions. What we all need is the actual every day experiences of the men and women wo-men engaged in the industry. We don't care so much about the failures; fail-ures; like the poor, they are always with us. We all have our failures, . our trials and tribulations, our losses and some of us our gains, and as it is tin gain we arc all striving for, it naturally follows that the life story of success is what we are most interested in-terested in. In seeking to succeed in the poultry poul-try business, it doesn't seem to make much difference which breed is selected. se-lected. We have seen much success and plenty of failures with nearly every breed and variety. Success, then, is more in the man than in the material, but there js this distinction in selecting a breed. If one intends to produce eggs in large numbers, naturally they should choose the non-setters non-setters of a laying strain, birds that have been bred by selection for generation gen-eration after generation until the laying lay-ing habit is firmly established. Such birds, with proper treatment, will produce the greatest number of eggs because there is no time lost by becoming be-coming broody and determined to set. Many of the setting -"breeds have been bred for high egg production, and with the exception of the time lost in setting, will lay almost continuously. con-tinuously. For a general location, waste land is the best, hills andl hollows, hol-lows, with a southern or eastern exposure ex-posure irc the best environments and it wont matter much what sort of a building is used so long as it is wind tight on the north, cast and west sides, with a full open front to the south and there should be a dry scratching shed convenient for use on stormy days. Chickens should never be allowed to stand around in the snow or in cold, wet slush cx-posetJ cx-posetJ to the wind. As a rule, any exposure to wct and cold that will make a hen sick will make a chicken sick and if proper food and comfortable comfort-able housing will keep a human being be-ing well, the same will apply to poultry. poul-try. Prevention of disease is a great deal easier and cheaper than cure and if intelligent, sanitary conditions are observed about the hen-house, there will be very little occasion for cure. Filth breeds disease and the easiest way to avoid disease is to clean up regularly and systematically once n week or fcftcner if possible. Remove all of the Stoppings and sprinkle the floor under the roots, or the drop-ping-boards, with clean, dry sand or ashes. Coal-oil the roosts twice a month with a white wash brush. Almost every one who has made a success of the poultry business has commenced with a few birds only, generally the sitting kind, and gradually grad-ually developed the plant as experience experi-ence and success icamc. This is the best schooling, but now-a-days no one can hope to make a great deal out of poultry without the use of one or more good incubators, each with a battery of brooders, for there is no use in hatching out a certain number of chicks if one can not rear them, and thirty-five or forty chicks arc as many as should ever be put intd one brooder, because experience has shown that one is more apt to raise a greater number in proportion by keeping the little broods in smalt numbers. One of the most successful success-ful poultry raisers we know limits the brood nunVbcr to twelve, claiming that by this method he can raise eight or ten out of every twelve, whereas he could formerly raise about twenty-five out of cach hundred hund-red when he brooded his chicks together to-gether in large numbers; In our own brooders we try to limit the number to forty or fifty and hope to rear seventy-five per cent, but often fall below this. (To be continued.) |