MANAGEMENT OF FOWLS
The methods of managing fowls vary according to the conditions under
which they are kept and the time that the keeper can give them. Fowls
ought to have an outdoor run, and it is desirable that this should be
large enough to be kept in sod; but very few people in towns can give
their fowls grass yards, and the advantages of an outdoor run will not
in themselves compensate for neglect in other matters. Hence we often
see fowls under poor conditions, with good care, doing better than
fowls, in a much more favorable environment, that are given indifferent
care. No absolute rules for keeping fowls under any given conditions can
be made. In general, small flocks of fowls that have free range or
large, grassy yards need very little attention, while those that are
closely confined require a great deal.
With good care the egg production of fowls in close confinement is often
better than that from fowls at liberty, but if the cost of caring for
the fowls is computed at current rates for common labor, the rate of
compensation is often higher on fowls running at large than on fowls in
confinement which are producing many more eggs. The question of profits
from amateur poultry keeping, however, should not be considered solely
with reference to the compensation for time used, nor should such work
be adjusted wholly with reference to economic results, for it combines
recreation, education, and money compensation, and the first two results
should have as much consideration as the last.
In this chapter the methods adapted to small flocks are first described
for the instruction of the pupil, and then descriptions of operations on
a larger scale are given for his information.
SMALL FLOCKS ON TOWN LOTS
=Numbers in flocks.= The average number of fowls kept by a town family
for its own use is about one dozen. Very few who keep hens have less
than half a dozen, and not many who plan only to supply their own tables
have more than a dozen and a half. Six fowls, if well cared for, will
produce all the eggs used by an average family of two or three persons
during the greater part of the year.
=Houses and yards.= For a dozen medium-sized fowls the house should be
about 8 ft. x 8 ft. on the ground, with the highest point of the roof
about 6 or 7 feet from the floor. The general rule is to make the
poultry house face the sun, and have the windows and the outside doors
in or near the front. The object of this is to get as much sunlight in
the house as possible in winter, when the sun is low, and to have the
walls tight that are exposed to the prevailing cold winds. In the
Northern Hemisphere the front of the house is toward the south; in the
Southern Hemisphere it is toward the north. In tropical and subtropical
countries houses are often so constructed that they can be kept open on
all sides in summer and closed tightly, except in front, during cool
weather.
[Illustration: Fig. 69. Small house used for fowls and pigeons]
If the land on which a house stands is sandy and well drained, the floor
may be of earth. The common practice where earth floors are used is to
fill the earth level with the top of the sill and renew it once a year
by removing the soil that has become mixed with droppings of the fowls
and putting in fresh earth. When a house stands on wet land or on clay
soil, it is better to have a floor of boards or of cement.
Fowls may be confined to a house for a year or more and lay well and be
in apparently good condition at the end of such a period, but as the
chickens hatched from the eggs of fowls that have been so closely
confined for even a few months are almost invariably less vigorous than
those produced from fowls that live a more natural life, this plan is
not much used except by those who keep a few fowls for their eggs only
and renew the stock by purchase as often as necessary.
[Illustration: Fig. 70. An old-style small poultry house and yard]
To give a flock of a dozen fowls outdoor air and exercise enough to keep
them in good condition, a yard containing about 300 sq. ft. is
necessary. There is no perceptible advantage in giving more yard room
than this, unless the yard can be made so large that grass will grow
continuously in the greater part of it. On most soils this would
require a yard containing from 750 to 1000 sq. ft. in sod before being
used for poultry.
[Illustration: Fig. 71. Coop and shade for flock of Bantams[9]]
[9] The coop is an old dry-goods box; the shade is a burlap bag.
Makeshift arrangements are not always nice looking, but some of the
finest chickens are kept in very poor quarters.
When fowls are confined to their houses, or to the houses and small
yards, the droppings must be removed at frequent, regular intervals. To
facilitate this it is customary to have a wide board, called the
droppings board, under the roost at a distance of eight or ten inches.
All the droppings made while the birds are on the roost fall on this
board and are easily collected and removed. It is a good plan to keep a
supply of dry earth in a convenient place, and strew a little of this
over the droppings board after each cleaning. Sifted coal ashes, land
plaster, and dry sawdust are sometimes used instead of earth on the
droppings boards. The droppings of fowls, when not mixed with other
matter, are often salable for use in tanning leather, but in most cases
the difference in their value for this purpose and for use as plant
fertilizer is not great enough to pay for the extra trouble which is
made by saving them for the tanners. Poultry manure is one of the most
valuable fertilizers and can always be used to good advantage on lawns
and gardens.
[Illustration: Fig. 72. Neat house for six hens]
If the floor is of wood or of cement, a thin layer of earth or sand
spread upon it makes it more comfortable for the fowls. On all kinds of
floors the modern practice is to use a few inches of litter of some
kind. There is a great variety of materials that will serve this
purpose. Lawn clippings raked up after they are dry, dried weeds and
grass from the garden, leaves collected when dry and stored to be used
as wanted, straw, hay, cornstalks cut into short lengths, and shavings,
such as are sold baled for bedding horses and cattle, are all good.
Fresh litter should be added in small quantities about once a week.
About once a month the coarse litter on top should be raked aside, and
the fine litter mixed with droppings underneath removed. Once or twice a
year all the material should be taken out and a fresh start made.
[Illustration: Fig. 73. House for a dozen fowls. Floor, 8 ft. x 8 ft.;
height at sides, 4 ft.; height in middle, 7 ft.]
When kept in a house having an earth floor, fowls will scratch aside the
litter from small spaces and wallow and dust themselves. In houses
having hard floors, shallow boxes about 2 ft. square, containing
several inches of dry earth, are placed for the birds' dust baths. Fresh
earth must be provided frequently or they will not use the bath as
freely as is desirable. For use in winter the earth must be so dry that
it will not freeze, but the birds prefer earth that is slightly moist.
The first function of the dust bath is to clean the feathers, and damp
earth does this much better than earth that is very dry. In wallowing to
clean their plumage fowls also rid themselves of lice. When it is not
convenient to store much earth, the same material may do double
service--first in the dust bath, then on the droppings board.
[Illustration: Fig. 74. Small houses in back yard]
In a bare yard the soil should be turned over often, all the matter that
can be raked up with a fine rake having first been removed. A yard that
is in grass requires little care except near the house, where the ground
may be bare. Here it should be forked over occasionally.
=Feeding.= The feeding of a small flock of fowls is a very simple
process. The table and kitchen waste of an ordinary family will furnish
all the soft food that they need, and usually enough green food to
prevent their suffering for lack of such foods if no other provision is
made for supplying them. This waste should not be carried from the house
as it is made, and thrown on the ground for the fowls to pick out of the
dirt. A better way is to provide a covered jar large enough to hold the
accumulation of this material for a day. Into this may be put all the
leavings from the table, except such things as orange and banana
peelings, large bones, and pieces of fat meat. Once a day, at whatever
time is most convenient, the contents of the jar should be mixed with as
much corn meal and bran (equal parts by measure) as will take up the
water in them and make a moist but not sloppy mash. This should be fed
in a clean trough. If the trough stands high enough from the floor to
keep the contents clean, it will do no harm if more food is given than
the birds will eat up at once, but the quantity given should never be so
great that it will not be eaten before the next feeding time.
Most people find the morning the most convenient time to give the mash.
If the mash is fed in the morning, a small feed of hard grain should be
given about noon, and a more liberal one an hour or two before sunset.
Some poultry keepers feed the different grains separately; others mix
them before feeding. Advocates of different practices often imagine
advantages for that which they favor, but no advantage can be
demonstrated for either. Wheat and cracked corn are the grains most used
in this country; they are about equal in feeding value. As corn is
nearly always cheaper than wheat, the usual practice is to feed about
twice as much corn. When the grains are mixed, one part (by measure) of
wheat is used to two parts of cracked corn. When they are fed
separately, it is usual to feed the wheat at noon, as the light feed,
and the corn in the evening, as the heavy feed. All the common grains
except rye make good poultry foods. Why fowls do not like rye is one of
the puzzles of poultry keeping. In some countries it is used for poultry
to a greater extent than in the United States, and fowls forced to eat
it here have done very well for short periods, but will not eat it
readily if they are accustomed to other grains and can get enough to
sustain life without it. Fowls do not like dry oats so well as corn and
wheat, but have not such a dislike for them as for rye. They are very
fond of oats soaked in water and partly sprouted.
[Illustration: Fig. 75. With curtains closed]
[Illustration: Fig. 76. With one curtain open]
[Illustration: Fig. 77. As an open-front house]
POULTRY HOUSE USED AT THE CENTRAL EXPERIMENT STATION, OTTAWA, CANADA.
(Photograph from the station)
The quantity of grain to be given any flock of fowls must be determined
by trial and observation. The grain should not be fed in troughs from
which the birds can eat it very quickly, but scattered in the litter on
the floor, so that the fowls will take exercise scratching it out, and
eat slowly. There is an advantage in giving some soft and quickly
digested food, but if too much of the food can be eaten quickly, the
birds do not take exercise enough. When there is grass in the poultry
yard, it is a good plan to scatter the grain in the grass sometimes in
fine weather. The hens will find it all, and in scratching it out will
bring up the dead grass, and a better sod will grow afterward.
[Illustration: Fig. 78. Flock of Barred Plymouth Rocks]
A dozen medium-sized fowls, if fed in the morning with the mash
described above, would probably need a little over a pint of grain in
the middle of the day and about a quart toward evening. An experienced
feeder can usually tell by the eagerness of the fowls for their food
whether to increase or diminish the quantity; but the most expert
poultry keeper does not rely upon this kind of observation alone.
Occasionally, before giving food, he looks in the litter to see if there
is grain left there from previous feedings, and if he finds much, gives
no more until the birds have eaten this all up clean.
Water should be given as often as is necessary to keep the supply quite
fresh. In cool (but not freezing) weather, once a day is usually
sufficient. In hot weather the water should be fresh two or three times
a day, in order that the birds may have cool drinks. In freezing weather
many poultry keepers give the water warm, because then it does not
freeze so quickly. The advantage of this is very slight, and wattles
that are wet with warm water in extreme cold weather become especially
susceptible to frost. It is not really necessary to give fowls water
when they can get snow or ice in a form in which they can eat it.
[Illustration: Fig. 79. Flock of Single-Comb White Leghorns]
Hens that are laying must be well supplied with oyster shells or lime in
some form for the shells of the eggs. They can get a part of the lime
required for this purpose from the lime in foodstuffs, but not nearly
enough to make good thick shells for all their eggs when they are laying
well. Ground oyster shells are sold by all dealers in poultry supplies.
[Illustration: Fig. 80. White Wyandotte hen and chicks]
=Growing chickens.= Where old fowls have to be kept in close
confinement, very little can be done in growing chickens. Some amateur
poultry keepers raise in small, bare yards birds that are as good as the
average chickens grown under more favorable conditions, but where one
succeeds in doing this a hundred fail. Most of the chickens grown in
close quarters are very poor indeed in comparison with farm-grown
chickens, and quite unfit to be kept for laying or breeding purposes.
Those who succeed in growing good chickens in a small place usually give
a great deal more time to the work than the chickens produced are worth.
The best way for a poultry keeper so situated to get as much as possible
of the pleasure of this interesting line of work is to hatch a few
broods and, when the chicks are large enough, broil, eat, or sell all
but a few of the best pullets and one or two cockerels. If these
thrive, they may be worth keeping for a year; but if, as they mature,
they do not seem rugged, it is not wise to use them for laying stock.
Where there is room to give young chickens a good grass yard, a limited
number can be grown to maturity year after year on a town lot and used
for laying and breeding purposes. Many town poultry keepers who might
grow a few very good chickens never grow a good one because they always
try to raise too many for the space at their disposal. Fifty or a
hundred chickens may be kept until two months old on a plot of land only
large enough to carry twelve or fifteen to maturity. So people start out
with a great many more chickens than they ought to have on their land,
never thinking that the better their chickens do at the start the sooner
they will begin to overcrowd their quarters, and that when that stage is
reached, the promising results of several months' work may in a few days
be ruined beyond remedy. After they are two or three months old, young
chickens will not make the best growth of which they are capable unless
they have either a great deal of room or a great deal more care than
most people who raise only a few, and have other work to do, can afford
to give them.
SMALL FLOCKS ON ORDINARY FARMS
=Numbers in flocks.= The ordinary farm flock consists of from fifty to
one hundred adult fowls and, during the growing season, from one hundred
to two hundred chickens. The old stock is usually kept in one or more
small houses located among the other outbuildings, and all run together
during the day. If the farmer wants to keep the fowls out of the
dooryard and the kitchen garden, he does not make yards for the fowls,
but incloses the dooryard and garden. Outside of these the birds go
where they please. The coops for the young chickens are often kept in
the dooryard or the garden until the chickens are weaned, but after
that the young birds are nearly always turned out to take their chances
with the old ones.
[Illustration: Fig. 81. A small farm stock of fowls, ducks, and turkeys]
Under such conditions a farm flock is not often very productive, yet, as
the birds secure a large part of their food by foraging, the flock may
be more profitable than a more productive flock for which all food is
bought and upon which a great deal of labor is expended. While this way
of keeping fowls on farms is not in itself commendable, it is not to be
altogether condemned, because circumstances often compel the farmer to
treat his fowls as a sort of volunteer or self-producing crop. The
conditions on a farm admit of this, and as a matter of fact the greater
part of our enormous total production of eggs and poultry comes from the
half-neglected flocks on the ordinary farms. Hence the conditions are
tolerable where they are necessary, but whenever it is possible to give
farm fowls enough attention to obviate the faults of common practice,
the product and the profits can be greatly increased with very little
increase in the cost of production. In this section we consider the
best methods of securing this result when all the old stock is to be
kept as one flock. Old stock and young ought always to be separated
unless the old birds constitute an insignificant portion of the flock.
[Illustration: Fig. 82. Good poultry house on Texas farm. (Photograph
from Bureau of Animal Industry, United States Department of
Agriculture)]
=Single houses for farm flocks.= It is as true on a farm as elsewhere
that the greatest yields of eggs and the best growth in young birds are
secured when the flock is divided into small groups. But a farm flock of
the class under consideration, while it makes its headquarters in such
buildings as may be provided, will forage a considerable distance in
every direction, going among growing crops from which the larger farm
animals must be excluded, and also following the larger animals in their
stables, yards, and pastures and picking up food left by them. As fowls
also eat many weeds and seeds of weeds, and all kinds of destructive
insects, the advantages of letting them run at large more than make up
for lower production. Also the production is normal and can be easily
maintained from year to year in the same line of stock, while high
production secured by extra care is forced and can be maintained in the
same line of stock for only a few generations. A flock of one hundred
fowls or less, that run together, may all be kept in one house just as
well as in several, if the size of the house and the equipment are in
proportion to the size of the flock.
[Illustration: Fig. 83. Rude poultry house on a Kansas farm. (Photograph
from Bureau of Animal Industry, United States Department of
Agriculture)]
If the snow lies long on the ground, so that the fowls are confined to
the house much of the time in winter, the allowance of floor space
should be about 5 sq. ft. per bird. Where the snow rarely lies more than
a day or two at a time, less space may be given, because the birds will
not occupy the house much of the time during the day. Under such
conditions the allowance of floor space may be as low as 3 sq. ft. per
bird. Those who go to this limit, however, should consider that, in the
unusual case of a snowstorm keeping the hens confined to the house for
more than a very few days, overcrowding may cause losses that more than
offset what was gained by using the highest capacity of the house.
Usually a flock of fifty hens needs a house with a floor surface of
about 250 sq. ft. This is obtained in a house 16 ft. square or in a
house 12 ft. x 24 ft. A house 20 ft. square is about right for
seventy-five or eighty hens, and is not badly overcrowded if one hundred
medium-sized birds are put into it. If an oblong building is preferred,
a house 12 ft. wide by 42 ft. long gives one hundred birds 5 sq. ft. of
floor space per bird. Houses of such size should be from 4 ft. to 7 ft.
high at the sides, and from 7 ft. to 10 ft. high at the highest point of
the roof, according to the style of construction.
[Illustration: Fig. 84. Good poultry house on a Kansas farm. (Photograph
from Bureau of Animal Industry, United States Department of
Agriculture)]
=Feeding.= In the feeding of a farm flock the first thing to consider is
what the birds can pick up by foraging. The poultry keeper on a farm,
even more than the poultry keeper elsewhere, should make it a rule to do
nothing for poultry that they can do for themselves. Fowls can do more
for themselves at some seasons than at others, because natural food is
more abundant. As fowls do not usually go very far from their house, the
larger the flock the less food each bird will secure. On some farms
quite a large flock of fowls can get all the food they need about the
barns and stockyards and in orchards and fields near the homestead.
[Illustration: Fig. 85. Poultry house at Mississippi Agricultural
College.[10] (Photograph from the college)]
[10] In this house the part of the rear wall above the roost platform is
made to open wide, thus affording perfect ventilation in summer.
When the conditions are such that it may reasonably be supposed that the
fowls can get all the food they require without going farther than fowls
usually wander, the best way to determine whether this supposition is
correct is to give them no food until evening, then throw out a little
grain and see how much they will eat. If it appears that they need to be
fed a considerable quantity, it is better to give a light feed in the
morning and another in the evening than to give a heavy feed once a day,
because if they learn to expect a full feed at a regular time, they will
not forage so well. Fowls that have an opportunity to secure
considerable food by foraging should never be fed so much in the
morning that they will sit around for hours. When hens on a farm need
only one or two light feeds a day, whatever grain is most convenient may
be given them. Where they get so much exercise and a good variety of
other foods, whole corn is as good as anything. A good way to feed it is
to break the ears into short pieces and let the birds pick the grain
from the cob.
In winter the feeding of the farm flock should have more attention,
especially if little food can be secured around the stables and
stockyards. It is a good plan to give, once a day, a warm mash made of 1
part (by measure) of corn meal and 2 parts of bran, and to give as much
grain at one other feeding as the hens will eat. Some farmers use sheaf
oats for litter in the floors of their poultry houses, throwing in a
sheaf or two as often as is necessary to keep a good depth of litter on
the floor, and then give as much corn in addition as the hens will eat
readily.
[Illustration: Fig. 86. Open-front house with hood. (Photograph from
Department of Agriculture, Victoria, British Columbia)]
If it is not convenient to make a mash, what grain the fowls will eat
quickly from a trough may be prepared for a warm breakfast for them by
pouring boiling water on it in the evening and letting it soak
overnight. Any of the small grains and cracked corn may be fed in this
way; whole corn needs longer soaking. In hard, freezing weather no more
mash or soaked grain should be given than the fowls will eat before it
can freeze. A favorite old-time practice still used on many farms is to
heat shelled corn in the oven and feed it while warm.
The best vegetable foods for fowls in winter are cabbages and
mangel-wurzels. The cabbages can be hung up by the roots and the fowls
will eat all but the stump. The most convenient way to feed the beets
is to split them and impale the pieces on spikes in the wall at a
convenient distance from the floor. Sound, sweet turnips are also good,
but bitter turnips and those that have begun to spoil are likely to give
an unpleasant flavor to the eggs. A little freezing does not seem to
affect the value of these vegetables for poultry food, and the birds
will usually eat them when frozen. The quantity fed at one time,
however, should not be so large that it may freeze and thaw several
times before it is all eaten.
[Illustration: Fig. 87. Movable poultry house on United States
Government farm, Beltsville, Maryland. (Photograph from Bureau of Animal
Industry)]
When hogs and cattle are killed on a farm, the blood and other offal,
and the small trimmings when the carcasses are cut up, should be saved
and fed to the fowls regularly in moderate quantities, but care should
be taken not to leave fat trimmings where the fowls can help themselves,
for if fowls have been short of animal food, they eat meat very
greedily and are often made sick by it. Blood and lean meat are not
very injurious, but too much fat meat has very bad effects.
[Illustration: Fig. 88. The upper shutter is closed only at night in
extreme cold weather]
[Illustration: Fig. 89. Lower part of front open for hot weather]
ANOTHER STYLE OF MOVABLE HOUSE AT THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT FARM,
BELTSVILLE, MARYLAND. (Photograph from Bureau of Animal Industry)
It is not necessary to give the fowls water when there is snow on the
ground. Delicate fowls that are accustomed to close confinement may not
be able to stand running out on the snow, but if they have a comfortable
house, with a good supply of litter on the floor, and are free to go and
come at will, rugged birds that are out in all kinds of weather are not
in the least hurt by going out on snow and ice and wet ground in cold
weather, and will usually take snow in preference to water when they can
get it. When the ground is bare and frozen, water or finely chipped ice
should be supplied. In extreme cold weather the latter is better,
because the water soon freezes and the fowls go thirsty until a fresh
supply is given them.
[Illustration: Fig. 90. Barred Plymouth Rock hen with Light Brahma
chicks]
=Reproducing the flock.= Fowls are short-lived creatures. They mature in
less than a year; their period of greatest productiveness is usually
over before they are two years old, and only a very small proportion of
a flock are worth keeping after that. Hence the entire stock of fowls on
a farm is renewed in two years. Most farmers intend to kill off all
their two-year-old hens each year, thus keeping up the number in the
flock by growing annually about as many young birds as there are hens in
the flock. To allow for losses, for an excess of males, and for inferior
pullets which are not worth keeping for layers, it is necessary to hatch
about four times as many chickens as are to be reserved.
=The hatching season.= Most of the chickens reared on farms are hatched
in the spring months. The late-hatched chickens are nearly all from hens
that steal their nests. People on farms do not want late chickens; among
so many larger ones a few small birds have very little chance to make
good growth. But those who have a place to keep a few early chickens and
time to take care of them often set a few hens in the winter. Eggs will
hatch at any season of the year, and chickens will grow if they get
proper care; but there is a comparatively short season in the spring
when eggs hatch better and chickens grow better than at any other time,
and the easiest way to get a given number of good chickens that will be
full-grown at the beginning of winter is to hatch them in this natural
hatching season. This season cannot be exactly defined, because it
varies according to latitude and also from year to year according to the
weather. Perhaps the best general rule is to have the first chicks hatch
when the grass is beginning to grow. To effect this the hens must be set
three weeks earlier, when there may be no signs of spring. No one can
time hatches to a natural phenomenon of this kind with certainty, but by
planning with reference to the advance of spring in a normal season, the
first hatches are usually brought very near to the desired time.
=Broody hens.= When a hen wants to incubate eggs, or, as the common
phrase is, to sit, she remains on her nest continuously and, unless very
shy, will not leave it when approached and will resent any interference.
The hen is then said to be broody. Because the broody hen makes a
clucking noise, she is sometimes called a clucking hen. Hens that are
shy when they begin to cluck, and that fly from the nest when
approached, usually become tame and allow themselves to be handled after
a few days. Broody hens cannot always be obtained at the time they are
wanted. In that case there is nothing to do but wait, or try to buy,
hire, or borrow them. There is no way of forcing or inducing hens to
become broody before they would do so of their own accord. When broody
hens are hard to get, people think that hatching with incubators will
relieve them of trouble and prevent delay, but the incubator, too, has
its uncertainties. Success in artificial hatching requires careful
attention to the operation of the incubator and good judgment in
adjusting and regulating it.
[Illustration: Fig. 91. Nest boxes, made in pairs, for sitting hens.
Inside dimensions: large, 16" x 16" x 18"; small, 12" x 12" x 15"]
[Illustration: Fig. 92. Same as Fig. 91, with nest boxes closed]
=Setting the hens.= As many broody hens as can be obtained should be set
at the same time. The most convenient style of nest is that shown in
Figs. 91 and 92, which can be kept closed if desired. The best nest
material is soft hay or straw. In preparing the nest a poultry keeper
shapes the nest material with his hand, to give it a bowl shape,
pressing it down to make a smooth, firm surface upon which the eggs will
lie evenly. It is a good plan to make the nests and place the hens in
them, giving to each a few China nest eggs two or three days before the
eggs that are to be hatched are given to them. The eggs for hatching
should be of good size and shape, with good strong shells, and as
uniform in color as can be obtained. The usual number of eggs placed
under a hen is thirteen. After the weather becomes warm, even a small
hen will cover thirteen eggs well, and medium-sized hens will cover
fifteen or sixteen eggs and often hatch every one, but early in the
season it is better to give a hen eleven eggs or perhaps only nine. The
number of eggs given a hen is almost always an odd number. There is an
old superstition that an even number will not hatch. The reason commonly
given by writers on poultry is that an odd number of eggs arrange in
better form in the nest, but this is mere fancy. However the practice
started, the real reason why odd numbers of eggs are placed in nests of
sitting hens now is that the custom is so well established, and the
habit of thinking of eggs for hatching in odd numbers is so strong, that
most poultry keepers do it unconsciously.
=Care of sitting hens.= The best food for sitting hens is whole corn. As
the hen will leave the nest only once a day, and not always daily unless
removed, the food is given in a vessel from which she can eat it
readily. The usual way is to keep a supply where the hens are, so that
whenever they leave the nest they can get something to eat. Whether to
let them choose their own time to leave the nest or to keep the nests
closed except when they are let off at a regular time each day is a
point to be determined in each case according to the circumstances. If
all the hens in the same place are quiet and get along well together and
do not quarrel for the possession of particular nests, they may be left
very much to themselves; otherwise the poultry keeper should regulate
things so that there will be no quarreling and no danger of a nest of
eggs getting cold while two hens crowd on another nest and break some of
the eggs in it.
Besides grain the hens need water and a place to dust. Most sitting hens
will dust themselves every time they leave the nest, if they have an
opportunity to do so. As lice multiply rapidly on sitting hens, it is a
good idea, even when the hen can dust herself, to apply an insect powder
to her and to the nest two or three times during the period of
incubation.
The eggs may be tested at the end of the seventh day by using a light,
as described on page 21. While fertility can be determined earlier,
waiting until the seventh day enables one to tell more surely whether
fertility is strong or weak, and to discard weak germs as well as
infertile eggs. An infertile egg is clear, that is, shows no signs of
development or decay, at every period of incubation. The eggs that rot
are fertile eggs in which the germs have died. A rotten egg is
distinguished from a fertile egg through the tester by the movement of
the line between the transparent air space at the large end of the egg
and the dark contents, this movement showing that the contents are in a
fluid state. The eggs which are the most opaque and have the air space
most distinctly marked are those which have the strongest germs. Eggs
that are conspicuously light-colored (as they appear before the light)
when compared with these may as well be discarded. If many eggs are
discarded, those that remain may be given to a part of the hens, and the
rest of the hens reset.
=Attention at hatching time.= The eggs of medium-sized fowls usually
hatch in from twenty to twenty-one days. The eggs of small fowls take
about a day less, and those of large fowls about a day more. Hens' eggs
have been known to hatch as early as the seventeenth day and as late as
the twenty-fourth, but as a rule chickens that come before the
nineteenth day or after the twenty-second are weakly. Hens sometimes
trample the chickens in the nests or crush the eggs after they are
picked, so that the chicken cannot turn to break the shell in the
regular manner. Sometimes this is due to the nervousness or to the
clumsiness of the hen, but oftener it is caused by the nest being too
much dished (that is, hollowed so much that the eggs tend to roll toward
the center) or by lice disturbing her. The chickens may be saved either
by removing them to other broody hens or by putting them in a flannel
wrapping in a warm place. Unless, however, the conditions are bad, it is
better to leave them with the hen. Hens with little chicks should be
left in the nests until all the eggs that will hatch have hatched and
the chicks are dry and begin to show an inclination to run about. Then,
if the weather is fine, the hen and her brood may be taken at once to a
coop out of doors, but if it is cold or stormy, the little chicks are
better indoors.
[Illustration: Fig. 93. Coop for hen and chicks, to be used without run]
=Coops for broods.= The coop for a hen and chickens should be so
constructed that they will have plenty of fresh air at night. There
should be a small run attached to it, to which the hen can be confined
while the chickens run about or come to her to be brooded, as they may
wish. It is not a good plan to let a hen run with her brood while the
chicks are very small. The chickens do much better if the mother is
confined and gives more attention to keeping them warm than to feeding
them. The coops should not be placed in the same spot year after year,
nor should they be on land upon which the old fowls run during any
considerable portion of the year. Sod ground is best.
[Illustration: Fig. 94. Coop to be used with runs, as in Fig. 95]
=Feeding young chickens.= From early times in America the most common
food for young chickens has been corn meal moistened with water. When
fresh this is a good food for chickens that run about and eat a great
deal of green food, insects, worms, and small seeds, but a mash of
scalded corn meal and bran, such as is given old fowls, or a baked
johnnycake, is better. There is no need of fussing with such foods as
finely chopped hard-boiled eggs, cracker crumbs, pinhead oatmeal, and
other things often recommended as most appropriate for the first feeds
of little chicks. Healthy hen-hatched chicks raised by the natural
method on a farm need nothing but one soft feed (such as has been
mentioned) in the morning, a little hard grain toward evening, and then,
just before dark, all the soft food they will eat. The best grain for
them is sound cracked corn; the next best is wheat. The chickens should
have good water always before them, and may be given all the milk they
want. Skim milk, sour milk (either thin or clabbered), and buttermilk
are all eaten with relish and promote health and growth. Vessels in
which milk is given must be cleaned often or they will become very
filthy.
[Illustration: Fig. 95. Coops and runs for hens and chicks[11]]
[11] Burlap bags are used to shade the interior or to keep out rain.
When not in use they are turned back on the top of the coop.
=Management of growing chicks.= Of course, healthy chickens are growing
all the time, and growing at a very rapid rate, too; but after the
chicks are weaned, they have usually reached the point in growth when
the increase in size in a short period is very noticeable. So poultry
keepers commonly speak of chickens from weaning time until maturity as
growing chicks. At this time the rudest kind of shelter will suit them
as well as any. Indeed, they hardly need shelter from the weather at
all. The most essential things are a good range, apart from the old
fowls, and an abundance of food. They should be able to pick up a great
deal of food for themselves, but should have enough given them to make
sure that they always have all the food they can eat. It does not pay to
stint them to make them forage farther. Young chickens will always take
all the exercise that they need if they have the opportunity, and the
more they eat the better they grow.
[Illustration: Fig. 96. Small house for growing chicks, in Maine
orchard]
[Illustration: Fig. 97. Small house for growing chicks, in orchard in
New York State]
When the range near their coops ceases to afford them good picking, the
coops should be moved to a place where the food to be secured by
foraging is more abundant.
LARGE STOCKS ON GENERAL FARMS
When farmers in America began to keep larger stocks of fowls, the most
common practice nearly everywhere was to increase the general flock
until there were far too many fowls on the land that they would usually
forage over. Under such conditions fowls on the farm were not
profitable. They damaged every crop to which they had access, and made
the farm most unsightly in the vicinity of the dwelling house. Then some
farmers would reduce the flock and return to the old practice of keeping
only a few dozen hens, while others would adopt the city plan of
building houses with many compartments and keeping the fowls yarded in
small flocks. This plan was usually abandoned within a few years,
because, while it worked very well in the winter, when the farmer had
time to give the hens extra care, they were not as well off in the
summer, when the farmer had to give attention to his field crops first.
Such was the usual course of development of farm methods of managing
fowls.
[Illustration: Fig. 98. Stone poultry house about two hundred years old,
on farm of F. W. C. Almy, Tiverton Four Corners, Rhode Island]
[Illustration: Fig. 99. Rhode Island colony poultry house for
thirty-five fowls]
[Illustration: Fig. 100. Colony poultry houses on Rhode Island farm]
=The colony system.= But occasionally a farmer whose flock had outgrown
its accommodations as one flock would divide it, moving a part to
another place on the farm, and so was able to maintain the increase in
numbers without adopting laborious methods. This idea was carried out
most systematically and most extensively in the vicinity of Little
Compton, Rhode Island, where the Rhode Island Red fowl originated. The
first settlers in this part of Rhode Island built large stone poultry
houses like that shown in Fig. 98. Some of these old buildings are still
used for poultry. This district is most favorably situated for poultry
keeping. The snow rarely lies long, and the birds can be outdoors nearly
every day in winter as well as in summer. Being near the fashionable
summer resort of Newport, the farmers here early found a large demand
for their eggs and poultry at high prices in the summer time, when in
many places the prices were low. Then in the winter they could send eggs
to Boston and Providence, which were the best markets in the country for
this class of produce. So these farmers had every inducement to devise a
practical method of indefinitely increasing their stocks of fowls. The
plan which they adopted was very simple. Small houses, which could
easily be moved from place to place with a two-horse team, and which
would accommodate from twenty-five to thirty-five fowls, were made and
distributed over the farm. Sometimes these houses were placed in
pastures not suitable for mowing or for cultivation and remained there
permanently, but as a rule they were moved from time to time to suit the
rotation of crops on the farm. As the number of these houses on a farm
increased, and they were spread over a larger area and sometimes placed
in fields and pastures a long distance from the farmhouse, the work of
caring for the fowls, even by the simple method used, became too heavy
to be done by man power alone, and a horse and cart was used in carrying
food and water, collecting eggs, and moving chicks and fowls from one
part of the farm to another. Thus the work was put on a very economical
basis, and keeping fowls by this method became a common feature of the
farming of this section of Rhode Island. The methods used here have
changed little, if at all, since the system was started sixty or seventy
years ago. The system is so primitive that people who are familiar with
more elaborate methods often imagine that the Rhode Island farmer, who
does so well by his simple methods, would certainly do very much better
if he applied more of the modern ideas. But the test of time has
demonstrated that this simple colony system is easily made permanent,
while most of the more ambitious and complex systems either fail utterly
or have but a transient success.
[Illustration: Fig. 101. Collecting eggs on Rhode Island farm. The
little girl is in the box in which dough is carried in the morning]
=Numbers of hens kept.= The number of hens kept on a farm in this
section varies from four or five hundred to over two thousand. Stocks of
from eight hundred to twelve hundred are most common. The principal
object is to produce market eggs, but as the two-year-old hens and the
cockerels that are not needed for breeding purposes are sold every year,
the receipts from the sale of live poultry are sometimes considerable.
[Illustration: Fig. 102. Colony houses at Michigan Agricultural College.
(Photograph from the college)]
=Feeding, care, and results.= The hens, being well distributed over the
farm, pick a large part of their living. Hard grain (usually cracked
corn) is kept always before them in the house, in hoppers which will
hold a bag of grain each. Once a day, in the morning, the hens are given
a feed of mash (or, as it is called in this locality, dough) of about
the same composition as the mash described on page 89. The dough is
cooked in a large iron set-kettle in the evening and left there until it
is to be fed the next morning. Then it is loaded into boxes or large
tubs on a cart. The cart also carries a barrel of water. As he reaches
each house the driver, with a shovel, throws what dough the hens need on
the grass near the house. Then he fills the water pail and drives on to
the next house. The hens require no more attention until evening, when
the man collects the eggs and gives more water where it is necessary.
[Illustration: Fig. 103. Moving one of the houses in Fig. 102]
[Illustration: Fig. 104. Colony houses at Iowa Agricultural College.
(Photograph from the college)]
Some of the smaller stocks of fowls on these farms--flocks that have
been selected with care and are given a little more attention than is
usual--give an average annual production of eleven or twelve dozen eggs
a hen, but the general average is only eight or nine dozen. Although the
profit per hen is small, the compensation for labor and investment is
better than on most poultry plants where a much greater product per hen
is secured. Even when eggs are the most important money crop on the
farm, the care of the laying hens is but a small part of the day's work
of the man who looks after them.
[Illustration: Fig. 105. Colony houses at Hampton Institute]
=How the chickens are grown.= The number of chickens reared each year on
one of these colony farms is usually about equal to the number of fowls
kept. Where there are so many hens of a sitting variety, and very early
hatching is not practiced, there is rarely any shortage of sitting hens
at the time when they are wanted. Usually twenty or thirty hens are set
at the same time, and it is expected that they will hatch eight or ten
chickens each. Sometimes sixty or seventy hens are set at one time. As
it is almost always quite warm when the chickens are hatched, it is
customary to give each hen twenty or more chickens. The coops are placed
in rows, several rods apart each way, on a piece of grassland that has
had no poultry on it for a year or more. Most of the farmers are very
particular on this point, and prefer to put the young chickens on land
on which there has been no poultry for at least two years. They have
learned by experience that under such conditions they can rear a much
larger percentage of the chickens hatched, and that the chickens will
grow more evenly and mature earlier. In planning the field crops grown
on the farm they always try to arrange so that the small chickens may
have fresh land not too far from the farmhouse; land seeded to grass the
year before is best.
The chickens are fed the same dough as is given to the hens, but are fed
oftener. They have a second meal of dough about noon, and their grain
supply, which is given in small troughs, is replenished frequently.
While the hens are with the chickens the food is placed where the hen
confined to the coop can get her share. After the hens are taken away,
the dough is thrown on the grass as the cart passes up and down the rows
of coops.
[Illustration: Fig. 106. Coop for hen and chicks, used on Rhode Island
farm]
When the hay has been harvested and the corn has grown tall, a part of
the young chickens may be removed from the land where they were started,
and the coops placed where they can forage on mowing lands, in
cornfields, and wherever they can go without damage to a growing crop.
As they become too crowded in the small coops, the cockerels are sold
and, if there are still too many birds in a coop, a few pullets are
taken from each of the overcrowded coops and new colonies are started,
so far from their old associates that they will not find their way back.
[Illustration: Fig. 107. Colony house for growing chicks, at Macdonald
College. (Photograph from the college)]
In the early fall as many of the oldest hens are sold as is necessary to
vacate the houses needed for the pullets reared that season. Then the
houses are thoroughly cleaned. (They may not have been cleaned before
for six months or a year.) If a house is to be moved to a new location,
the change is usually made at this time. One or two cartloads of clean
sand are put into each house, to make the floor higher than the ground
outside and to provide an absorbent for the droppings which are allowed
to accumulate. When they are brought to the house, which will probably
be their home as long as they live, the pullets are confined to the
house, or a small temporary yard is attached to it, so that they cannot
wander away. After a few days of confinement they accept the new home as
their headquarters.
=Adaptability of the colony system.= The colony system as developed in
Rhode Island attracted little attention elsewhere until very recent
years. Since about 1900 many descriptions of it have been published, and
numerous efforts have been made to adapt features of this system to
operations in other localities. The principal obstacles to this are snow
and predacious animals. Where snow lies deep for months it is not
practical to keep fowls in widely distributed flocks in winter. In some
places the plan of distributing the houses in summer and parking them
(that is, placing them close together in a regular order) in winter has
worked very well. Where wild animals are numerous, colony methods cannot
be extensively applied, but on most farms a limited application of the
system will greatly increase the amount of poultry that can profitably
be kept.
In England many farmers use smaller colony houses than those in use in
Rhode Island, and move them often, not letting a house stand in the same
spot long enough to kill the grass. Some of the houses used in this way
are provided with small wheels. The advantage of moving houses often is
greatest when the fowls are on good arable land, upon which there are,
or will be, crops that can utilize the manure which the birds leave on
the land. If the houses are moved methodically, the fertilizer will be
evenly distributed.
INTENSIVE POULTRY FARMS
[Illustration: Fig. 108. Colony houses in foreground; sheds for ducks
beyond. (Photograph from Bureau of Animal Industry, United States
Department of Agriculture)]
=Reasons for concentration.= In the early days of the poultry fancy in
this country the tendency was for each fancier to keep as many different
varieties as he could find room for or could afford to buy. Most of
these fanciers were city people who thought that, as they kept their
fowls in small flocks anyway, they might just as well have as many
different kinds of poultry as they had separate compartments in their
poultry yards. When rich men with large estates became interested in
fancy poultry, they usually built large houses containing many small
pens, each with its small yard, and bought a few of each known variety.
By far the greater part of the choicest poultry was kept in small
inclosures, and the flocks that laid remarkably well were usually city
flocks that were given good care. This seemed to a great many people to
prove that fowls did not need the room and the freedom which for ages
they had enjoyed on farms, and that the limit of the possible extension
of the city method of keeping fowls in small, bare yards depended in
any case upon the business capacity of the poultry keeper.
=Concentration not profitable.= Very few people who have not had
experience in growing large numbers of poultry under both good and bad
conditions can be made to understand how futile industry and business
methods are when many other things which affect results are unfavorable.
Even when the obstacles to the application of intensive methods on a
large scale are pointed out to them, most novices imagine that the
difficulties are exaggerated for the purpose of discouraging them. They
think that the successful poultry keeper wishes to discourage
competition, and that the person who has failed does not want to see any
one else succeed, and so warns others to let such projects alone. Those
who have been very successful in their first efforts in a small way
seldom lack perfect confidence in their ability to make good on any
scale if once they are in a position to devote themselves entirely to
this work.
[Illustration: Fig. 109. Commercial laying house at New Jersey
Experiment Station. (Photograph from the station)]
For some seventy or eighty years, but more especially for the last
thirty or forty years, the most conspicuous phase of the poultry
industry in America has been the widespread and continuous movement to
develop large plants of this character. There has been no time, for a
quarter of a century, when poultry plants of this kind, which to the
uninitiated appeared to be highly profitable, have not been numerous.
The owners of many of these plants have claimed that they were making
very large profits, and their claims have led others to engage in the
business, following in every detail the methods in use on some large
plant which they suppose is very successful. So, while well-informed
poultry keepers know that these methods are not practical on a large
scale, except in a few limited lines of production, there is in the
business a constant succession of newcomers who try to operate egg farms
and breeding farms and combinations of various lines by methods that are
not suited to their purpose.
[Illustration: Fig. 110. Interior of a compartment in commercial poultry
house, United States Government farm, Beltsville, Maryland. (Photograph
from Bureau of Animal Industry)]
=Common type of intensive poultry farm.= The ordinary special poultry
farm is a run-down farm upon which have been erected the buildings
necessary for the accommodation of from four or five hundred to two or
three thousand fowls kept in comparatively small yards. The buildings
are nearly always neat and substantial, the fences strong and durable.
The arrangement of the plant is orderly, and, when well stocked with
fowls and kept clean, it presents a most attractive appearance. The
houses and yards for adult stock, the incubator cellar and the brooder
houses, the barns and sheds, and the dwelling of the owner or manager
occupy but a very small part of the farm--usually from one to three
acres. The young chickens are grown year after year on the nearest land
not occupied by the permanent buildings and yards. In most cases the
land is so heavily stocked with them that they secure almost nothing by
foraging.
The routine of work on such a farm is very exacting. The fowls can do so
little for themselves and require so much extra care that the poultry
keeper knows from the start that he cannot make his business pay unless
he gets a very high production. So all his efforts are devoted to this
end. He uses labor-saving appliances, carefully systematizes his work,
and by great effort often succeeds in making a fair profit for a few
years. It is at this stage of his progress that the poultry keeper of
this class does the boasting which misleads others. Then things begin to
go wrong with his stock. His eggs do not hatch well, because his
chickens, while nominally on free range on a farm, have really been no
better off than chickens reared under ordinary conditions in town. His
chickens do not thrive, because they are weak and the land is tainted.
He himself is worn out with long hours of work and no holidays, and if
he does not realize his mistake and close out the business in time, it
is only a question of continuing until his income and credit combined no
longer suffice to keep the business going.
This in brief has been the history of all special poultry farms where
intensive methods were used, except the duck farms and the several
classes to be described farther on in this chapter. By no means all
succeed to even the extent described, because a great many people who go
into the business have so little capital that they have to give up the
business before they have been able to make it show a profit. When the
owners have capital, plants are sometimes operated for years at a loss,
but it is very rare indeed that a poultry farm of this kind (except in
the classes to be described later) is continued for more than seven or
eight years, and few of them last five years. Those who wish to make a
poultry business permanent must adopt other methods.
BROILER GROWING
The desire for what is rare and costly is a common trait in human
character. In nothing is it more plainly displayed than in the demand
for food products out of their natural season. An article which in its
season of abundance is a staple article of diet, within the means of all
but the very poorest, at its season of scarcity becomes a luxury which
only the wealthy can afford.
Before cold-storage methods had been brought to high efficiency, there
was a period in the latter part of the winter and the early spring when
young chickens were very scarce. The number that could be hatched with
hens to meet a demand at this season was small, and those who were
hatching autumn and winter chickens by the natural method found it more
profitable to keep them to sell as roasters late in the spring and early
in the summer.
=The "broiler craze."= A little before 1890, artificial incubators being
then first brought to a perfection which made them popular, some poultry
keepers began to hatch chickens in the winter to meet the demand for
early broilers. Those who were successful made a very good profit on
what chickens they had ready to sell while the prices were high. Most of
them operated in a very small way, taking up this work simply for
occupation when they had nothing else to do. Many were gardeners who had
just about enough slack time, after the harvest of one year was over, to
hatch and grow one lot of broilers before beginning their regular spring
work.
These people were not under any delusions about the limitations on this
line of production. They knew that the demand for very small chickens at
very high prices was limited and easily satisfied. But, as usual, the
published accounts of what they were doing set a great many people to
figuring the possibilities of profit from such a business conducted on a
large scale. For a few years the broiler craze affected nearly every one
interested in poultry keeping. Thousands who never engaged in it were
restrained only because of lack of capital or inability to adapt it to
their circumstances. Many people who had been through several
unsatisfactory ventures in poultry keeping thought that they saw in this
the one sure road to wealth, and began to make plans to grow broilers in
large quantities. Besides these business ventures there were countless
small ones, sometimes conducted under the most unsuitable conditions.
People tried to grow broilers in living rooms, in attics, in all sorts
of unheated outbuildings, and in house cellars to which the daylight
hardly penetrated.
=Present condition of broiler growing.= The production of broilers as a
specialty did not last long. The improvement in cold-storage methods
soon made it possible for speculators to carry over large quantities of
summer chickens, and the poultry keepers in other lines could easily
arrange to produce all the fresh broilers that could be sold at a good
profit.
ROASTER GROWING
=Description of a good roaster.= To roast nicely, a fowl must be
full-grown and well filled out, but young, soft-meated, and fat. A fowl
is "ripe" for a choice roaster for only a short period after arriving at
maturity. When a pullet has laid a few eggs, her flesh becomes harder
and is never again as tender and juicy as it was before she laid an egg.
When the spurs of a cockerel begin to harden and to grow a long, sharp
point, and the bird becomes boisterous and quarrelsome, the flesh
becomes dry and tough and is not fit for roasting.
=General and special supplies.= From July, when the earliest farm
chickens are large enough for roasting, until about the first of
February, when the last of the late-hatched farm chickens disappear from
the markets, there are nearly always enough very good roasting chickens
in the general market receipts to supply the demand for that class and
grade of poultry. Then for four or five months there are no fresh
roasting chickens on the market except those grown especially for this
trade. This line of poultry culture was developed first near
Philadelphia, in southern New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania, about
forty years ago. The chickens were hatched with hens in the autumn and
early winter, each grower having only a few hundred. They were sold not
only in Philadelphia but in New York and Boston, and in smaller Eastern
cities where there was a demand for them. They were, and still are,
commonly known as Philadelphia chickens.
[Illustration: Fig. 111. Massachusetts soft-roaster plant]
=Large roaster plants.= After incubators came into common use, the
production of Philadelphia chickens increased, but a more remarkable
development of that line of production took place in Plymouth County,
Massachusetts, just about the time the broiler craze started. The
growing of winter chickens had been carried on to some extent in
southern New England in the same way as in the vicinity of Philadelphia,
but the local supply was small and irregular until artificial methods
were adopted. Then, quite suddenly, the industry developed extensively
in the vicinity of Norwell, Hanover, and Rockland. Its growth was
remarkable, both because of the number of people who were successful on
a comparatively large scale, and because it attracted almost no
attention outside of this district until long after it had become a
well-established local industry.
[Illustration: Fig. 112. Incubator cellar]
The methods of the roaster growers in this district are very intensive,
but as originally developed their business was not a continuous line of
intensive poultry culture, nor is it continuous now except in some
cases. For many years after the business began, the growers bought the
eggs that they incubated from farmers whose flocks were kept under good
conditions and were strong and vigorous; but as the numbers engaged in
growing winter chickens increased, the supply of eggs from the farms was
not sufficient, and some of the roaster growers began to keep hens to
supply a part of the eggs they used. Later some produced all the eggs
for hatching that they needed for their own use, and a few sold to
others also. This, however, can be done only by those having quite large
farms. Some of the most successful growers have only a few acres of land
and do not attempt to keep breeding fowls.
Hatching begins in August or September and is continued until all the
chickens that can be handled are hatched. If the eggs hatch well from
the start, a large grower may have his houses full by December, but
usually it takes until January to complete hatching, and sometimes it
takes longer. The price paid for eggs for hatching is only a little
above the price of market eggs, and the buyer takes all the risks of
poor hatches. The chickens are kept in warm brooder houses as long as
they need artificial heat, then they are removed to cold brooder houses
of the same type or to colony houses. Those who have land enough use
mostly colony houses. While in the heated brooder houses the chickens
are fed in the regular way--with mixed ground grains, either dry or
moistened, and small whole or cracked grains. After they leave the
brooder houses they have cracked corn, beef scrap, and water always
before them; for green food they have cabbage or the winter rye or grass
growing on the land.
[Illustration: Fig. 113. House used for growing roasting chickens]
[Illustration: Fig. 114. Group of houses like that in Fig. 113]
As the object of the grower is to have chickens that will grow large and
remain soft as long as possible, the breeds used are principally Light
Brahmas and Plymouth Rocks, although when eggs of these varieties cannot
be obtained in sufficient quantities, Wyandottes are used. The cockerels
are caponized when they are about two months old. A capon does not grow
a comb or spurs, nor does it crow. If a perfect capon, it remains
always soft-meated and may grow very large, though it does not, as is
commonly supposed, grow larger than a cockerel within the time it is
usually kept before being killed. An imperfect capon will after a time
grow a comb and short spurs and, though sterile, becomes harder in flesh
than a perfect capon. An imperfect capon is technically called a _slip_.
[Illustration: Fig. 115. Petaluma egg farm. (Photograph from Bureau of
Animal Industry, United States Department of Agriculture)]
About the first of March some of the earliest pullets may begin to lay.
From that time all the pullets that begin to lay, and the slips as they
appear, are marketed; all others are kept, because the grower realizes
the largest profit on those that can be marketed in June and July, when
the price is highest. By the middle of July, at the latest, everything
is sold. The poultry keeper then begins to prepare for the next crop of
chickens by taking up all his fences, plowing land that is not in grass,
and planting it with winter rye or cabbage or some late garden crop. Rye
and cabbage are preferred, because the rye will remain green all winter
and furnish green food for chickens that have access to it, and the
cabbage makes the best of green food for the little chickens in the
brooder houses. It is just as good for the others, too, but not many of
the poultry keepers grow enough to continue feeding it to them
throughout the winter.
While the land on these plants is heavily stocked with poultry, the
birds are on it only half of the season,--when vegetation grows
freely,--and during the remainder of the season a great deal of manure
is removed from the soil by gross-feeding crops like rye and cabbage. So
the land may be heavily stocked longer than it could be if fowls were on
it all the time. The chickens grown in this way do not usually grow so
large as those that are given more room, but they are grown at less cost
and are as large as the market demands. By this method the land will
carry a large crop of chickens year after year for many years, yet it
finally becomes so contaminated that chickens do not thrive on it.
[Illustration: Fig. 116. Group of houses on a Petaluma egg farm.
(Photograph from Bureau of Animal Industry, United States Department of
Agriculture)]
INTENSIVE EGG FARMING
Still another important development due to artificial incubation took
place in California. The climate of the Pacific Coast is well suited to
fowls of the Mediterranean class, the cold never being severe enough to
affect their large combs. Hence these fowls early became very popular
with farmers in this section, but as they were non-sitters, those who
kept them had to keep hens of another breed to hatch and rear the
chickens. When an incubator factory was established at Petaluma,
California, the farmers in that vicinity began to use incubators, and
some small egg farms grew up in the town. White Leghorns were kept
almost exclusively. Before long the egg industry here had grown to such
proportions that it was the most important local industry, and the
district became celebrated as a center of egg production. Although the
product is different, and a different type of fowl is used, the
conditions at Petaluma closely resemble those in the roaster-growing
district of Massachusetts. The special egg farms are small, each
containing from five to ten acres. The houses for the laying hens are
larger than the colony houses used in Rhode Island, and are arranged in
groups of three, each group containing about five hundred hens.
The egg farmers grow their own pullets but, as a rule, do not breed or
hatch them. The hatching is done by custom hatcheries, the eggs coming
from flocks of White Leghorns on farms that do not specialize in poultry
but keep a flock of Leghorns under more favorable conditions than exist
on the egg farms. Here, as in the Massachusetts district, the bad
effects of intensive methods are reduced for a time, because the fowls
affected by them are not used for reproduction.
POULTRY FANCIERS' FARMS
A large proportion of poultry fanciers are city people who have very
little room for their fowls. Some have no room at all for growing
chickens, although, by giving them the best of care, they can keep a
small flock of adult birds in fair condition. Such fanciers have to find
farmers to grow chickens for them. This is not so easy as is commonly
supposed, for the farmers who are sufficiently interested in poultry to
give them the care required to make good exhibition birds usually want
to give their own birds all the time they can spare for work with
poultry.
[Illustration: Fig. 117. Yards of a small poultry fancier]
So it happens that, after a few years' experience in keeping fine fowls
in close quarters, an amateur fancier almost always wants to move to a
farm where he can grow more and better chickens. A small farm near a
city suits the average fancier best, because, when so situated, he can
continue his regular work and look after his poultry in leisure time.
Fanciers generally use houses with many pens under one roof, because,
even when they have only one variety, the different matings must be kept
separate during the breeding season, the adult males must be kept
separate at all times, and valuable hens cannot be kept in large flocks
except when damage to plumage may be remedied before they are to be
exhibited or sold. A fancier will keep only five or six birds, and
sometimes only two or three, where a utility poultry keeper would keep a
dozen. If the yards connecting with the pens in the houses are small, he
will arrange so that each lot of fowls may have access to a large yard
daily or on alternate days. In every way practicable the experienced
fancier arranges to give his fowls all the advantages of natural
conditions, while isolating them as completely as is necessary to keep
each individual in perfect condition.
[Illustration: Fig. 118. Large fancy-poultry farm]
Poultry farms that were started as intensive market-poultry or egg farms
are sometimes converted into fancy-poultry farms. This is very likely to
be the case if thoroughbred stock is used and the owner becomes skillful
as a breeder. If he can breed fowls of a quality to command high prices,
he may be able to produce enough of them on a small farm to make a very
good living, when it would be very much harder, or perhaps impossible,
to make the farm profitable with ordinary stock.
[Illustration: Fig. 119. Growing chicks in a fancier's yard]
[Illustration: Fig. 120. Young stock in cornfield on a fancier's farm]
While farmers usually care more for horses, cattle, sheep, and hogs,
many become interested in poultry, and if they are natural fanciers and
good business men, it often happens that the growing of fancy poultry
becomes one of the most important industries on the farm. Many women on
farms become interested in fancy poultry, and some become very skillful
breeders and exhibitors. A farmer-fancier's poultry plant is usually a
combination of extensive and intensive methods. Some buildings with
small compartments must be provided, but all except the choicest birds
can be managed just like the ordinary fowls on a farm where
arrangements are made with a view to giving them the full advantage of
the good conditions which the place affords.
[Illustration: Fig. 121. Summer quarters for poultry. (Photograph from
New York State Agricultural College at Cornell University)]
To a novice in fancy-poultry culture the number of chickens grown by
expert fanciers seems very small for the equipment and the land used,
but the old fancier has learned in the costly school of competition, by
the bitter experience of defeat, that in growing exhibition poultry it
pays to give the birds a great deal more room, both indoors and
outdoors, than is needed simply to get quick growth and good size.
Elegance of form, depth and brilliance of color, and the indefinable
qualities of style and finish that distinguish the high-class exhibition
fowl are obtained in a much larger proportion of birds when they are
given a great deal more room than they apparently need.