UC BERKELEY MASTER NEGATIVE STORAGE NUMBER 00-89.10 (National version of master negative storage number: CU SN00089.10) MICROFILMED 2000 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY PHOTOGRAPHIC SERVICE USAIN State and Local Literature Preservation Project Funded in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities REPRODUCTION AVAILABLE THROUGH INTERLIBRARY LOAN OFFICE MAIN LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA BERKELEY, CA 94720-6000 COPYRIGHT The copyright law of the United States (Title 17, United States Code) governs the making of photocopies or other reproductions of copyrighted materials including foreign works under certain conditions. In addition, the United States extends protection to foreign works by means of various international conventions, bilateral agreements, and proclamations. Under certain conditions specified in the law, libraries and archives are authorized to furnish a photocopy or other reproduction. One of these specified conditions is that the photocopy or reproduction is not - to be "used for any purpose other than private study, scholarship, or research." If a user makes a request for, or later uses, a photocopy or reproduction for purposes in excess of "fair use," that user may be liable for copyright infringement. University of California at Berkeley reserves the right to refuse to accept a copying order if, in its judgment, fulfillment of the order would involve violation of copyright law. Byrne, John Bruce The Pacific poultryman’s | new inspiration Sacramento, Calif. c1923 BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD TARGET University of California at Berkeley Library USAIN State and Local Literature Preservation Project Master negative storage number: 00-89.10 (national version of the master negative storage number: CU SN00089.10) Author: Byrne, John Bruce. Title: The Pacific poultryman's new inspiration,. Sacramento, Calif. c1923 Description: 41 p. 23 cm. Subjects: Poultry. Call numbers: CSL State Lib SF487 B982 California Non Circ Microfilmed by University of California Library Photographic Service, Berkeley, CA Filmed from hard copy borrowed from California State Library FILMED AND PROCESSED BY LIBRARY PHOTOGRAPHIC SERVICE, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY, 94720 DATE: 5/00 | REDUCTION RATIO: 8 PM-1 3%"x4” PHOTOGRAPHIC MICROCOPY TARGET | NBS 1010a ANSI/ISO #2 EQUIVALENT b= 128 25 Ro Ee mil £3 l= I 1 fel l= RRR } - : : les | { H Tt Ti gir : igi 1 basil idladballel aiditi adtabidadl ool peed be A | 1 idl | ; i i f i 1 i 1 Cf ml pi 8 Ty TTL HT a ot REE ey § : hy #1 } | : | Wt i LF. HE i RR i 1 ¥ 3 : ian ? £ g bi | rd f § # able p ‘3 od 4 pistad Hy i i I 3 oe iH | i 4 2] % | 4 H 2] i | 1 } 1] | | | 1] f 1 fn v E i! b : | | | i | { | i | + i } | ; : ¥ H % pi { rs | } | i ; 1 | : 4 i 3 ] x | a i's 4 i : J J | i : i FE 3 g t J i t : 4 : i | p- A |] | : i } i . 4 i | is ¥. a i Wl Ate 4 — INTRODUCTION e of this book i to give the poultrymen a clearer idea actics that should be applied to modern poultry my ‘intention to take time and space for unneces- ons on brooding, housing, etc., as these topics out for years, by both mouth and press. cal experience, in the poultry game as well as n the road as a traveling salesman, visiting prob- | and women than any other person in all cli- rel to an elevation of 7000 feet, I am able to save eepers and those contemplating going into the poultry oe of dollars each year through the medium of this her understood that I have nothing to sell outside t prompts me in this undertaking and I am not enced by any man or body of men. I am sure “this work will meet the approval of all fair-minded, ry keepers who are constantly seeking information of their chosen occupation and striving for more and J. B. BYRNE, Sacramento, California, Route 4, Box 1091. n munications requiring an answer must be accompanied nts and addressed to J. B. Byrne, Route 4, Box 1091, Sacra- CONTENTS Location .. How to Start in the Poultry Business * The Care of Breeding Stock Care of Hatching Eggs Incubating Brooding Baby Chicks Preparing Pullets for Egg Production Brooders and Brooding Systems Laying Houses Feeds . i Feeding and Handling Hens for Egg Production Culling - i IS There MONEY IN POUITIY 2... emeeernecenn enn nsnassessnsssanessmseesaa smsnnto 38 CALIFORNIA STATE LIERARY THE PACIFIC POULTRYMAN'S ~NEW INSPIRATION CHAPTER 1 Location The first thing to consider before entering the poultry game is the location. Some folks will tell you to make the best of what you have at hand and go ahead. I have found good sized poultry colonies on flat or low hardpan soil with not more than twenty inches of soil One seldom finds a prosperous poultry ranch in this kind of a location. The settlers there will say, “I settled here for cheap land and found it good for nothing, except poultry.” Dear reader, in many instances one can go ahead with what they have at hand and do well but this occurs only where they happen to be advantageously located, in one or more ways. A location is a big asset in any business, no less so in the poultry business than any other—without the proper location one has a millstone about their neck. The last named class of poultrymen are doomed to failure-because one cannot build and ‘prosperous unless they have something on which to build. It is possible and at times very practical to build on a cheap, worn out place, providing such place has good drainage, but of course a great deal depends on the man that undertakes this venture. If one has soil even though it be poor, by the proper management and the chicken manure you will have, you will soon surprise your neighbors by the amount of green feed you are able to raise if you have an abundance of water for irrigation, which is more important to the beginner than rich land, but trying to make a go on too shallow a soil is an uphill business. Even after you get it well fertilized your crop will dry out quickly and when you turn the water on, it will get too wet just as quickly, the water will stand on top of the hard- pan and if the sun is shining hot it will scald your green crop. To grow the right kind of greens, the kind that poultry relish and get succulence from, one must keep them constantly growing or they will get tough and be worse than no green feed at all. Without green feed one cannot expect many eggs or healthy hens, with tough and fiberous greens one cannot expect any more, also, you have wasted your labor in cutting. I am not condemning all hardpan soils, I have seen wonderfully fine crops grown on hardpan soil but it was where there were three or more feet of soil, or where the hardpan was convex in shape there- by giving perfect subterranean drainage. To make a long story short if is just as important to have good soil for poultry as it is to have good soil for any other purpose. I mean deep soil, fertility is not altogether essential where you have fertilizer and plenty of water for irrigation. : ~~ Deep sandy soil lessens your labor, it does not bake and is easier to work. When you put out your trees which you will have to do if you make a home for yourself or for your flock, they will root and thrive much better than trees planted on shallow soil even where you blast for them. I have often seen men toiling their lives away on a piece of dry, gravelly, shallow soil and my heart ached to think what a shame it was that such ambitious men had to waste their energy bucking fate, when if they would spend the same energy on a piece of land that would respond correspondingly to the amount of labor applied, they would make a good living and create a nice little bank account as well. Is it not better to own one acre of good land and spend your whole time working and cultivating it, than to own ten acres of poor land at a total price of which you would have to spend for one acre of —3 good land, at the same time scattering your energy and not produc: ing enough to pay the taxes and interest on the investment? Man’s productive powers are limited even on good land and he makes accordingly to the amount of labor expended, all other things being equal. Take for example, if three acres of good land were all that one could properly care for and he spread his efforts out over ten acres his income would not increase accordingly to the extra num- ber of acres farmed. This does not only apply to farming but to poultry raising as well. Then if you have a good piece of land, there is a great satisfaction in knowing that if at any time you should want to sell, you will have no trouble in doing so and that you will also get your money back and probably more too. Markets, transportation and cheap feed are items that figure deeply in the location of a poultry ranch, and one must have a de- pendable market. A market of this character is more to be sought for than high local markets just for certain portions of the year. Restaurant and hotel trade is as a rule unsatisfactory where one has to depend exclusively on them to market their products. Mountain summer resorts are also undesirable markets to have to lean heavy on, while they pay fancy prices for fancy goods while they are open, feed is most always correspondingly high and transportation is high the season of the year when you have to look for an outside market. There are a few resorts located close to small wheat belts where one is able to purchase feed at a reasonable figure, such a location will afford a nice little business for one or two poultrymen, provid- ing they have transportation facilities sufficient to get their winter eggs out without freezing. CLIMATE—Climatical conditions are to be such that appeal to your own personal comforts and likings more than anything else. A hen will not lay unless she has comfortable surroundings, neither will the caretaker give her those surroundings unless he himself is satisfied with his surroundings and conditions. I have started from sea level at Haywards, worked north through Petaluma and Santa Rosa, then east through Sonoma, Napa and over into the San Joaquin and Sacramento valleys. Have also worked the Sierra Nevada Mountains, crossing the summit at an elevation of over 7000 feet. Then down to Reno, Sparks, Carson, etc. Finding poultry ranches of considerable size every few miles either on the highway or back a short distance, some of which are modern in every way, including one just out of Reno on the highway to Sparks. This poultry house is built of bricks and plastered, it has the most modern ventilating system in use at the present time. This man knew what he was up against before building as he had a very changeable climate to combat. The temperature running high in summer time and on clear, still days in winter it will be very warm about 2 o'clock of afternoons and at 3 or 3:30 the sun will drop down behind the mountain, immediately sending the ther- mometer down to zero and occasionally ten degrees below. This man’ has been able to successfully cope with conditions of this kind and expects to build up a substantial breeding stock and baby chick business, catering to the trade of Nevada, Idaho and Montana. There is one thing in particular that I noticed in making this trip as well as several shorter trips into high altitudes, that it rarely occurs that you find a poultryman above an elevation of 500 feet, who has been troubled with roupe or chickenpox. I have had men in the interior valleys say to me, “Isn’t it too cold for chickens at high altitudes,” or “Isn’t it too damp and windy on the coast for chickens.” Similar questions have been asked me by Petaluma poul- trymen, such as, “Isn’t it too cold in the mountains,” or “Isn’t it too hot in the Sacramento or San Joaquin valleys to raise poultry.” Let me say right here that no place in California has a monopoly on the poultry business so far as climate is concerned. A man can build and prepare for any ciimate, the main difficulty being so many do not know how to build, or have failed to get acquainted with conditions before making the start. —4 Therefore good markets, cheap feed and cheap transportation are the points to watch in choosing a poultry location. It is almost im- possible at times for one to get all that they ask for, but in making sacrifices of you have to sacrifice your market and cheap transpor- tation you have sacrificed life itself. Without these two things it will be well for you to dismiss the idea of starting a poultry plant. CHAPTER II How to Start in the Poultry Business There are several ways of entering the poultry business, also sev- eral ways of getting out. The ways to enter the poultry business depends entirely upon the individual, his previous experience, his available capital, his general conditions and the time he wishes to spend prior to the time he wishes to have his place on a paying basis. As a rule the quickest way in, is the most expensive way. The majority start with the baby chick where they intend to operate a strictly commercial egg plant. There are also some breeding plants started in this manner, but most breeders start with matured stock purchased from some reputable breeder at the season of the year when breeders are selling at reduced prices to make way for young stock coming on. Where one intends running a plant for commercial eggs only and carry no breeding stock at all, the first mentioned way is the only way to start, providing one is going in deep enough to buy chicks in quantities large enough to compensate the owner for staying with them. Otherwise if ones capital is limited and he wishes to hold down a job and carry from four to six hundred birds, it would prob- ably be better for him to buy pullets three months old. Where one has limited capital to work with and wants to build up a flock of exceptionai quality, a good way is to get a small num- ber of baby chicks from an old established breeder or one who is able to send you what you buy. Pay the price and get the best, for this is your foundation stock, that on which you are going to build for years. Then if you want an immediate income buy yourself the number of standard bred chicks that you are able to pay for and buy feed for till they are si xmonths of age. It will be well to leg- band the foundation stock you have purchased so that you will not run the risk of getting them mixed even though you have them in separate pens. There are times when one can procure first-class stock at a very low price comparatively speaking. You may know of some good poultryman who has not yet gained notoriety as a breeder, never- theless this man may be a real poultryman who has paid a fancy price for his foundation stock and yet cannot ask and get the price that is justly his. Stock purchased from this man will be in every way as good as though it had been purchased first hand, but you must be dead sure that this man of whom you buy is a real poultryman, because he cannot necessarily turn out first-class stock simply be- cause the original stock were of the best. The high-bred bird can be ruined in twenty-four hours so that it is almost worthless either for eggs or for breeding. Some men will point with pride to a pen of birds and say, “That pen is from A’s stock or B's stock, etc. That is all very well as far as it goes, but we must take into con- sideration the man into whose hands these birds have fallen. The law of the universe is, that nothing stands still—this is true of a chicken as with everything else, they are forever going backward or forward. If one intends to hatch baby chicks for the trade it is better to get pedigreed stock as there is no better advertising than to pay $150.00 or $200.00 for a cock bird, also, it is the kind of advertising that pays in more ways than one, providing you get a $50.00 bird for your $200.00. Never buy fall hatched chicks expecting to sell commercial eggs from them, unless you just want something to do —5— to keep busy. Fall hatched chicks thrive well but do not begin to lay till eggs are on the downward slide, and when the egg market revives again your pullets are ready for the moult, the same as your old hens. The fall hatched chick is good foundation stock to be used for breeders their second year, because their mothers were birds of merit to be laying hatchable eggs, or eggs of any kind in September. The main idea in having pullets is to have eggs when eggs are worth something. If we fail in getting our pullets to lay in the winter time we had better carry our old hens over, which can be done at a great deal less expense than raising pullets. And again, if you are starting with anything less than a million dollars you will be anxious and in most cases will have to see a profit in less time than a year, which you will be unable to do with fall chicks. In many cases I have seen men who never lived to see the profit at all There are some poultrymen who will contradict this but I expect criticism and will explain in a later chapter what I consider a profit- able bird, also who I consider a successful poultryman. A seemingly small thing, yet one of the most important things for the beginner, is to be able to take advice from one man only, until he is convinced that someone else knows more and is willing to impart his knowledge. When the beginner is thoroughly con- vinced of that fact, then take on your new adviser and do not at the same time listen to what Tom. Dick and Harry have to say in telling you how you should run your plant. Also bear this in mind, the poultryman who is very generous and liberal with his advice as a rule is the one who is owing his dealer the largest feed bill. Do not start big unless you have one of these three things, practi- cal poultry experience, a good adviser or a long pocketbook. If you haven't at least one of these three things start small and grow in practice and wisdom too. Some of our most prosperous poultry ranches were started in a small way, the owner starting with a few birds while he still held his regular position, making enough for his support and that of his family and not drawing on the proceeds of the chickens for family support. A small flock of hens will grow into a large flock in a surprisingly short length of time where the pro- ceeds of the flock are kept in the business. Using the proceeds to pay. for the feed consumed, spraying material, new poultry buildings, insurance, taxes on poultry equipment and buildings and such other expense that is incurred for the maintenance of the flock. Your employment outside of your chickens may be that of working for an employer, or it may be that you are raising some other kind of stock, dairying, or raising some kind of farm crop. If you are working for an employer it will be necessary for your wife or some other responsible person to give your birds the necessary care while you are away, otherwise your poultry venture will be a failure. If your bread-winning work is on the place with your chickens you can handle practically all of the work yourself. As your flock grows you may gradually work yourself out of the other work, thereby giving your full time to the chickens. Here is a word of warning. A great many men make the vital mistake, where they are doing other work in connection with poultry work, of considering the poultry work as only secondary to other duties which they have to perform. This practice is a grave mistake as the chickens will have to have the first consideration if you are to be a success in the poultry world. When the time comes to feed your chickens, do it: when the time comes to spray, do so, and when the time comes to clean house, do it. Do not get up in the morning, look around and say, “Well I guess I will plow, cultivate, or do something else today because there are indications of wind or rain.” As a matter of fact the thing you are forced to leave undone will suffer, but do not let that thing be your hens. If it is you will lose more money than you would to let a multitude of other things go, it is not so much what you lose today or tomorrow if you neglect your hens, as it is what you will lose in weeks and months to follow. I believe I see as many poultry failures for want of capital as —f— all other causes combined, men who have small capital to start and with just enough hens to dig out a scant living. This poultryman, will = him, iy in many instances a real poultryman so far as Engwi edge and love of the game goes, and these are two valuable requis o of a poultryman. But this poultryman has the breath squeezed ou of him all the time as he is not able to expand for the mere feason that it takes all of his poultry profits to feed and clothe himse and family. CHAPTER III The Care of Breeding Stock The scientific breeding of fowls is by far the deepest study affect- ing the poultry industry that we have to deal with; it is a subject that will make a volume within itself if properly treated. There ate books without number on the market treating the subject of Drees - ing exclusively, some of which are very reliable up to this time. . S a matter of fact, there are none of us who can forecast the future and even guess to any degree of accuracy what is in store ie us in the way of knowledge, pertaining to methods of breeding fowls. i Some time ago a certain poultryman said to me, “There is no nee of experimenting with poultry any longer, experiments are SEpensive. The way to do is to pattern after the successful poultryman and on will come out all O. K.” It is well enough to take a good tip front your neighbor when you know it is a good tip, but a poultryman musi never overlook the fact that his destiny is in his own hands, 50: 14 as his personal success as a breeder is concerned. Each and e gy poultryman has his own problems to solve and he must meet he issue squarely and solve it mainly with his own brains, for no iy poultrymen have exactly the same problems under the same con! ¥ tions, even though they may be living side by side. It is uy cal 3 opinion that forty years from now, poultrymen will look bac Tin this age and stage of poultry evolution and think how crude we » > Readers, I have had ten years of practical work and hard ii y bucking and solving poultry problems, new ones every year. Pou fry. men, you know it, you also know that successful breeders are non too plentiful, many of you have realized that fact to your Sorrow, Poultrymen, you may have a eerily hen that jeid shough Joey ans year to pay for her feed, the depreciation on Sag dhe Nouse ich she occupied, she also paid her pro rata of ta Fo the amount of money invested in her and her house Jos Still she was not a profitable bird or in other words a successfu id Likewise with the owner, if he makes enough only to pay running ee penses he is not operating a successful plant, yet at the same fins this particular poultryman might be a successful poulisyman i : some other conditions. His failure here is no fault of his, have explained in a former chapter. Success as applied to owners of bree kind of stock that some breeders are sen ding farms.—When I see the ding out, it makes me feel that there should be a law to protect the buyer against a certain hatching and selling baby chicks 1 their year’s income. Under the 11 blame them for doing this, but class of so-called breeders, that. are of unknown quality simply to swel onditions one can not well | = ising OE nto if the buyer of this inferior stock could only see ink of buying. m which this stock came he would not thin Jing. Te ee a buyer of baby Chicks Vi Dies ur % Doity jou nal or farm paper and there appears beiore his has read one-fifth of these tisers as long as his arm, by the time he 3 i hardly knows what to do advertisements he is so confused that he Yoh nae o do it. As a rule unless he is an old seasoned p be how oe his order with the adver ites whe bay an Jost fishery ad, and the one who exaggerates the strongest. ey laces of such advertisers and was very Visited mek see the most unfavorable conditions and management —_ of is bresding 2 0 ck. The management of breeding stock on some ‘places with what i ol wlmely Impossible to furnish customers his breeding stock is of A-1 it oney, regardless of the fact that Mr. Poultryman, if , you are small, buy close to 0 hi have the privilege of seeing before Ea ong wil just id eely i have Sometliing good as someone else's 0 or state. i thing is to find it and know it when you Gong Swoek 's plentig), the o f Jou are a big buyer and seen an ad. that appeals to you and you RE oe duaihied with fhe advertiser, spend three per cent of your making a trip to look the over. It will be money well spent whether you gin: Place Many men otherwise good poultrymen are failures at breeding. You may walk up to a certain class of a bre V eder and ask, “ Dresame Stock thls year ur. Jones, will your chicks be a i niin / re ? n most instances Mr. Jones wi by saying, “Oh! My chicks will be much better this Wii i id Inproduced new blood.” ! y as Bye r. Poultryman, if this certain breed 3 ’ er has not u igment, o bana if ig wy flock after getting Ls Scent : you ascertain to any de f whether or not he has used the pro j J Segroe of cattalnly a oche now used proper judgment in selecting outside ton y to his old stock so as t qualities in the future? Unless this thing i 0. promote heise: he may strengthen his flock alon EIS Solsniincally accomplished g certain lines but weak others. A real breeder brings in his r on Shem In new blood from over the f something he has fitted for a certain ac lish no done by the grab-bag method. He k SO a oul that cannot. be . nows the weaknes Eons) Bok w manifasiures his own repair material, es streng 8 required. This is intelli t the only way of gaining ground. Not b Bont resiing: ; . ut what the new blo y be ut Siceliont qualiy tui more than likely a misfit, BD ay 1 on the starting basis again. If this practic - Usiged In Sy or Saree years, it destroys all Da of jo is uniform known Sk of hits Of ni quality or with the distinctive character you see a particular breeder who has stock whi ch yo Pe Superior 30 your awn oad Possessing certain Daten i our stock without the use of thi which has this character full ° bigod y set from years of const then buy one or more male birds fr Han. reediss: this breeder and t to a few of your hens which have a on i Hale Jen the desired qualificati the male bird as possible, takin a Qualifications of ; g care of any weaknesses that appear in the male bird by being sure that italy > the dams are ticularl strong in this point. Then you sho a Dy t. keep the off-spri mating separate until you have the d i i Py us ; esired qualities pretty th set, at which time you may infuse this b D y orousnl lood into yo from both sides. But if you are t ol i Yous Sencyal ack ! es. 0 hold this characteristi - ne 2 Jou win have to breed against any and all or er Ee snl om 3 RE I hm if you see that you cannot master 0 again go to the same b Yhom you purchased your start, not to some other er trom o Jou Lieve again lost all. : you 8 1t is not my intention to write a volum : : e on breedi Just wsont 3 iow of the most practical steps for the avis I hin or $p ac oa egg farmer, as the egg farmer is the class of poultry- J3% Who Wi man Jnost Soucoruad The man who is in the egg : ng along that line would not be i my going into Mendelism, Darwinism. Fan ® nieresioy In sm, 1 ; cy Feathers, . al Rago wants in the line of feathers is Tin Ste as be Vr Jos Jy song au Ce Dyke must foasianily : C e along the line of e : nothing but selective and systemati i EE Droduction; : ¢ mating will d the hot air has been spilled about what we know ne er 2 —8 raising, there are two things which the poultryman must get if he is to succeed. Those two things are vitality and egg production. Occasionally one will see a flock of birds with an abundance of vitality and yet they will hold back from laying for various reasons, which I will explain later, but one never sees a paying flock without the presence of vitality, consequently vitality is of prime importance, a thing that must be present in every link of the poultry chain. The thought that comes to a man before he starts a breeding plant. is: What breed and strain of fowls are the most profitable to breed? That chiefly depends on the amount of capital available and the market facilities and whether one is going in for market poultry or for eggs. In some parts of the United States one can figure on both eggs and market poultry, but one leaning strong on market poultry in California is fighting a harder fight than the egg farmer and that is saying considerable. Whether the Pacific Coast poultry market ever will be strong enough to make it worth while for one to raise table fowls exclusively in California is a question not worthy of much thought at the present time, owing to three things. Namely, the enormous amount of the lighter breeds that are thrown on the mar- ket each season. In the spring time thousands of tons of leghorn broilers (or the by-product from the egg farm) go on the market at a price far below that for which one could produce them, if it was not for the fact that the eggs carry the general business over. Then in the fall or late summer thousands upon thousands of pounds of hens go on the market after they are through as profitable egg producers. In winter months when the poultry market strengthens up a little birds of the heavier class are shipped in from the Middle West, where they have been raised and fattened on feed purchased at a much lower figure than what it can be obtained for on the Pacific Coast. If one goes in for market eggs on the Pacific Coast they should - run one of the Mediterranean breeds of which there are five, con- gisting of nine varieties of Leghorns: Single Comb Brown, Rose Comb Brown, Single Comb White, Rose Comb White, Single Comb Buff, Rose Comb Buff, Single Comb Black, Silver and Red Pyle. Five va- rieties of Minorcas: Single Comb Black, Rose Comb Black, Single Comb White, Rose Comb White, and Single Comb Buff. Two varieties of Anconas: Single Comb and Rose Comb. Spanish and .Blue Andalu- gians, a total of eighteen varieties to select from. The Single Comb White Leghorn is a big favorite on the western coast, but in. selecting one of these varieties of these breeds select the one that you like best as that is the one you are most likely to succeed with. Fully ° make up your mind to what you want before you start, as making a change is a costly business. The advantages of any one of these breeds over the heavier breeds are many from the standpoint of the poultryman who is running a commercial egg plant. In mating the heavier breeds one has to carry more male birds than where they are mating the lighter ones as eight or ten hens are about all that one cockerel can serve and get good fertility. With the Mediterraneans one may mate from fourteen to twenty hens to each cockerel and yet get good fertility. The number de- pending upon conditions and the size of the matings. Fewer cockerels being required for flock matings than for pen matings. This means a saving of money both in birds and in housing, as well as a saving of labor. The lighter birds will consume about twenty pounds less feed per hen per year, will stand confinement better, therefore being the most practical birds for the commercial egg farmer. It's true that the heavier bird will weigh more and bring a few cents more per pound than her lighter sister when sold on the market but the dif- ference will not be enough to compensate one for the extra expense in keeping, as they will not as a rule lay the number of eggs as a bird of the Mediterranean type. I know of a great many eastern people who have come here and launched into the table fowl busi- ness thinking western people slow in not seeing the great oppor- — Ge tunity of cleaning up a fort i une in a very few Be Sue SEeeption of a very few have all drifted ha Taste people Bo Ta or ree ore should be at least twenty-one months old and er hee ange. They may be confined when first come into out Elven fee range again three months previous to the ti ring SE or atching. They must not be forced for e on is Sie Mui meat or electric lights, do not over Teor Be ding stock Juring the winter months but give them a he ed ee sn ur 8. ve them an abundance of fresh air and all hundred and SL bo a, cons iy hi li mes 222y three \ on IY Jey cannot crowd Ysle breeding ei oy 2 got ro y means a lo Dame Bi germs as well. Good Dr See a A aon thie : In selecting cockerels to mate select onl he EO porous ¢ es from high producing dams. If you have a c¢ X 1 Py x 38. particularly desirable quality which you as Tike 12 orpeinate 2 your flock, select only hens to mate with him th t they cover any Ee lh a Be OS Same lime be vite hat always remembering that a similar PT ent in the So, will be intensified and lik : presen; in Doth mare ns SWise Sood traits will be intensified when Do i degree at Die any bird in the breeding pen that in the slightest have a bird that rs sign of sickness at any time. Whenever you no possibility of ever a, 13% band a ang put it where Tere is oges is leading the breeding end of the aki ge The craze for ast as possible. game to destruction as say craze, it has certainly become a craz : hi vip Biwi force 1008 breeding stock as Sor Ain Jolyme for our havin . will certainly have to give the fancier the in dit aay 2 : ven ths vitality which we have. If the egg farm h d much stronger Ay fon the fancier gave him, we would De a O06 Who bisods for oo. The egg farmer hoots the fancier as bein one Tae 3% for eathers, but this is where these poultrymen ris vitaliey as well Or not only breeds for feathers but he breeds { SRPOTIONT k: i is the first step to be taken and by far the ri has to Dolly ib I 1 ‘ foundation stone upon which the wl visi for vitality, as in is 0 reach the goal. It requires skill in breedin HHS te At reeding for feathers but the fanciers know that for eggs St essential in breeding for feathers as in elie The commercial egg farm or ti : Airmer as a rule is one tre, wellgostod and businger sade. of ny clas. ot Tar or sioc the fancier and 3 of this fact they made a mistake by ae singing rying to wrest control of breeding for eggs from the breeding salon o themselves acquired more scientific knowled : farmers Bon ose lines. Where a very small per cent ; ® made a failure Dn ‘this undertaking, the large majority ii losing an avera : x Sonssquonily the time has arrived when ve oe S01. which reas Ee : iid per cent of our matured birds every bts Tone, Te on 29 east a loss of fifty dollars on every one hundred of twelve ges Der nomous loss, we have increased egg production of every one Sania ou what hens pull through, or sixty hens out dozen on this in ; ~'8Uring an average price of forty cents Sot ls Nerdusel production we have twenty-four dollars a share and bt ot this loss to breeding, but poor breeding take its hicks In vo, Ee PE takes the balance. The enormous loss of baby strated by By ar Be, due to poor breeding. This fact is fully a chicks the best th at ninety per cent of the poultrymen give thei in many cases at is obtainable, such as good care and good Toon TOT Chiohe 5 haying) gibi vie Soars per one hundred pounds brooding equipment so that we should bo. oc a alias a a much higher per cent and a much more sturdy chick than we did twelve years back. There is a general movement now on in California poultry centers compelling poultrymen who furnish hatching eggs to accredited hatcheries to have only stock meeting with certain requirements. The poultrymen themselves are taking this step with the hope of gradually building up a strain of fowls that will pay for their keep and something over, enough at least to justify them to stick to the game. As this book is based on facts, not theories, I do not propose to theorize on this point, but at the same time I do not feel like passing this by without comment. No doubt there will be some poul- trymen who will want in on this hatching egg business who have not really a laying strain sufficiently strong to compete without some secret stimulation. As a matter of fact a poultryman of this kind would be doing the poultry industry a gross injustice, giving a double measure to his brother poultryman who really has stock capable of going over the top on its own merit. Breeding stock must not have the life forced out of them during their pullet year in order to make a record sufficiently high to enable them to be eligible to the breeding pen their second year. Rather than buy chicks from stock of this character I would prefer chicks from nine or ten months old pullets that were vigorous and had never been forced in any way. Beware of freak birds in the breeding pen, they are most unre- liable, the abnormal producer is just as dangerous as her subnormal sister. Their traits not being set, leaves their progeny on a sliding scale and you never know how high or how low they many gO. I prefer breeding stock with a trapped record ranging from 160 to 180 eggs without any forcing whatsoever. In years to come this record will have to be moved up according to the general improvements made along lines of vitality and egg production. Progeny from this kind of stock will be heard from when put into the laying house and fed the proper egg food, but you want to forget to put your best birds into the general laying house, they belong in training to make effi- cient breeders later on. If you are breeding from your Own stock to replenish same, pick for breeders the best looking birds you have, those that have the characteristics of the laying hen, feed them a simple ration of which I will say something later. Do not force for heavy production to prove to yourself that you have used good judg- ment in selecting; take what eggs they lay and be satisfied, if that is but 140 per hen. Then let their progeny prove whether or not you have used good judgment in selecting. If you are equipped with trap- nests keep such birds as I have described, eliminating those with records below the flock average, also eliminate the abnormal layers as breeders. The gradual gain is what counts and places you always on solid ground. CHAPTER IV Care of Hatching Eggs ntended for hatching purposes should be gathered The minute the egg is developed or matured it if it is subjected to the proper temperature. If en it is fully matured incubation will start even then, so one may readily see what will happen if the egg is subjected to an incubating temperature for several hours after it is laid, with different hens repeatedly climbing on and off the nest. The healthy germ will start and will eithér die or become materially weakened when cooled, the results of course depending on the de- velopment of the germ at that time. We often hear it said that hen hatched chicks are much stronger than incubator chicks which is not the case where eggs have the proper care before putting them into the incubator. I will illustrate to you the effect of temperature and moisture on eggs that are set under hens. When biddy steals her nest, she as a rule is the sole tenant of her castle, she does not Eggs that are i every two hours. begins to incubate the hen fails to drop her egg wh —11— TTT set on her eggs until she is ready : y to incubate them, on th hand he Srops her egg and immediately steps off the nest g oarer ay 5 e egg cools at once giving the germ no chance to Gather your eggs often and immedi ately cool th lemperature of around sixty degrees, then pack them so thar wit Stay as near this temperature as possible. So much said for tem- perature. Regarding moisture; two hens may steal their nests, one on the ground in a grassy place and the other up in a hay-mow : the one n the hay-mow will hatch two or three chicks while the one setting on the ground will hatch ten or fourteen. Why? Because the oEgs in the barn dried down too much before the time for incuba- on. Some folks are very particular about turning eggs which they are saving to incubate, but do not give the proper attention to the : ore important matter of keeping their eggs at the desired tempera- re aud Sufrounied il fresh alr of the proper humidity without . Orth wind 1s blowing there should be a f Of ssh Waser Setting around in the room or wet eg Ish moisture to the air. If setting eggs are properl Sared fo Shey may be Bony as long as ive weeks with rin iri udden jars or vibrations, either bef tti them into the incubator or after. The ule : . germ in an e is th ; Fraghle piece of life, that one has to deal with, oe it Rp ave careful nursing if it matures to any thing worth while. CHAPTER V Incubating The subject of incubation is treated | pretty thoroughly i books ot Fossruction Seat pul by the various Rl the ubators. ng before putting up an incubator is to h a suitable house or cellar to put it in. The ii ; re are incubat aud Selars 0 Sany yarieties, most of which I find are ye nicely. e main idea is to have the fi i 80 that there will be no jar or vibration, th folie it provided with ample ventilation at Spr ar thing Is tn Rave ] all times for you are tai to experience all kinds of weather during th i mm We have incubators these da Purse of novation. ys that will do the work seemingl nearly perfect as it is possible for man to k eas the machine a chance. It is impossible Jaze, Droyiaing one gives ; ; e for a machine to functi properly if it is handicapped on location. I have on tucked away in dark damp, foul smelli : EL Hachines ; , ng corners without ventila- Hom re Sanu expect results under these conditions even ind . ere are machines that have prove i under such conditions and when taken out and wl on g 8 lle : ~ would turn out average hatches, not saying that the sidewalk 8 the proper place to incubate chicks but the machine had a better chance to function than it had in the former place. The material of which you build your incubator house is not SO important, so long as you have the house solid and such that can be kept somewhere near a uniform temperature i bator house or cellar your means will allow, at paid te oo sd Judgment i selecting the proper materials of whatever. nature they : y ve ake into consideration your requirements for the climate n which you live, cost of labor and cost of different materials, etc How to operate your incubators: It is best for you to follow to a letter the instructions accompanying each machine you buy. As the manufacturer of that particular make of machine understands its working ability under the different conditions far better than any one else, as he has tested, experimented and proved his work under all conditions. The one question asked more than any other in regard to incubating chicks is: Why do chicks die in the shell? Well, that cannot be placed to your incubator in particular even if you have op- erated it properly. Chicks and chickens die continually at all stages and ages from the time the egg is fertilized until the chick becomes eight years old or more. Naturally the end comes for some of them while yet in the shell and ready to hatch. At the beginning the egg may be unhealthy when it passes from the ovary, it may be weakly fer- tilized. The parent stock may not have had the proper amount of ex- ercise, the proper ration, the proper amount of greens, may not have been properly mated, the eggs may not have had the proper care. There are many reasons why chicks die at hatching time from ex- haustion. CHAPTER VI Brooding Baby Chicks ~ Brooding chicks and raising young stock to laying age is one of the most responsible jobs in connection with the poultry industry, and I will add, it is the process that has more angles, more problems, more disappointments and more failures than any other work con- nected with the poultry business. The poultryman who brings up a fine, sturdy flock of pullets to maturity with the minimum loss is a proud poultryman indeed and he has every right to be. One will hear his neighbors say, “Jim Jones had good luck with his chicks this year.” Maybe it was luck and maybe it was not. If he bought his chicks from some unknown hatchery, it possibly may have been luck. If he raised them in a careless, happy-go-lucky manner, it was luck, but if he used his head and took action accordingly it was not luck. The art of raising good chicks is not luck with our best poul- trymen, but if he has a bunch go to the bad, that is luck because he has to combat obstacles and conditions which are beyond his control. The poultryman who lets little matters slide, expecting them to right themselves will very soon have trouble. He can not sit around wait- ing for the feed salesman or the poultry tonic salesman to call and advise him what to do. Then when he receives the much-needed advice, to say, “Well, I will do that tomorrow.” I have had men tell me that, and as soon as I was out of sight they would follow the lines of least resistance by carrying out my instructions so far as possible without doing any work. The poultry field offers no induce- ‘ment to the man who is afraid of work, not that caring for poultry is such hard work but there is any amount of detail which has to have attention. Poultrymen, let this be your slogan—"“Leave nothing un- ‘done that should be done today to promote the health and welfare of your flock.” Baby chicks must have sufficient heat night and day to be healthy. An excessive amount of heat is just as injurious as. not having enough, but I find more instances where chicks get an insufficient amount of heat than I do where they are overheated. Overheating is not at all likely with an ideal brooding equipment, for chicks will move back from the heat where they have the opportunity to do so. Heat in the day time is just as essential as at night time if the days are at all chilly. Do not encourage the vice of crowding by cutting off the heat in the day time because it is warm on the outside against the sunny side of the house. Chicks that crowd either in the night time or day time are not doing well and if conditions force them to it, it will finally become a habit which is very annoying and at the same time very hard to eliminate. The baby chick must have equal access to heat and cold if it is to develop into the right kind of a bird. Any of you who were raised in a cold climate know that, when a child, you would play in the snow until your feet ached and your hands would be numb: you would then run into the house, up to a roaring fire, probably a fireplace, where you would get warm quickly, then out you would go again. That was the process that makes robust, rosy-cheeked boys and girls. It was life exemplifying itself; life forced action, and action forced appetite and life. Disease and sluggishness hasn't time to light on a life like this whether man, beast or fowl. wf Gone Poultrymen, if you will apply this rule to poultry raising it will multiply your success many fold. Too many little chicks are raised as hothouse plants, they are as pale as blades of grass which have been denied sunshine, they grow up to be delicate, frail, disease traps, easily susceptible to colds and roupe. It is folly to think that a bird of this kind will ever pay her keeper a profit after she pays her room and board, to say nothing of interest, depreciation and taxes. I have been called to many places where chicks were dying for the want of fresh air. Some men will start the baby chicks off with sufficient air, but lose sight of the fact that a flock four weeks old requires a great deal more air than they did at one week old, and at six weeks of age they will require a great deal more than they did at four weeks and so on up till they are full grown. So many men are loath to believe that their birds won't catch cold by increasing the air supply. Birds will not take cold if additional air is given regularly and systematically from the time the chicks are two weeks old. As a matter of fact if one waits until their birds are starved for oxygen then throw in a large volume of air or create a draft your birds will catch cold. Harden your birds from the start. Even the best of mother hens do not sit around all day hov- ering their chicks, though the weather may be cold, the chicks are more or less exposed to it. You will see them with their heads sticking out to the fresh air while the mother hen is warming them. The thing that mother hen is most particular about, is caring for her brood, when a shower of rain comes up; dryness is a word to keep in mind always for all classes and all ages of chickens. Unless you are able to keep your houses dry, sell your chickens and go in for ducks and geese. Before putting chicks in the brooder have it at a temperature of ninety-eight degrees for at least two hours before putting chicks in so as to have the floor thoroughly warm and dry. Sometimes it is well to be provided with some sort of a screen or small meshed wire fencing around your heating device for the first day or two, until the chicks learn not to stray too far from the heat. You may pro- vide luke-warm water or buttermilk for drink as soon as you get the little fellows comfortably located in the brooder, although it may be some time before they will drink. If they do not, don’t worry for they will drink when they really need water. Have your foun- tains such that there will be no trouble of chicks getting wet, which they will do the very first morning after learning to drink if there is any possible chance of them doing so. After your chicks are about seventy-two hours old, you may give them a sprinkling of scratch feed such as you desire to feed. If you prefer to make your own scratch in preference of feeding a com- mercial scratch, I would suggest that you feed a mixture of cracked wheat, cracked corn and steel cut oats, or oat groats, in the follow- ing proportions: Cracked wheat, one hundred pounds; cracked corn, twenty-five pounds; oats, twenty-five pounds. Where one is incubat- ing and has eggs that were taken out during the first test they may also feed those for the first two or three days. The question of feeding mash to baby chicks is being discussed far and wide, with strong arguments on both sides. By carefully observing the feeding methods of hundreds of poultrymen under most all conditions, I am confidently convinced, that one can raise a better chick and do it in a much shorter time by feeding the right kind of mash in the right quantities from the time the chicks are eight days old. Traveling as I am, this question is put .to me prob- ably oftener than any other. I advise some men to feed mash and advise others not to feed it. The idea is this. I advise the beginner not to feed mash until chicks are six weeks old, because if mash is not judiciously fed, it is liable to cause some irregularities that otherwise would not occur. There are many poultrymen who suffer severe losses every season by feeding mash. Such poultrymen would make money by not feeding mash at all before chicks are six weeks nLite old. Over-feeding on too rich mash or a mash that has too much undigestible vegetable protein will cause bloody diarrhoea as well as other bowel and intestinal troubles. A well-balanced mash con- sisting of the proper materials, is not at all harmful in any way, pro- viding the chicks eat their scratch or grain ration along with it, which amount should be fifty per cent of the whole. On the other hand it is very beneficial, being somewhat more concentrated, easier and more quickly digested than grain. Where chicks attempt to live on mash alone they will not do well as it is necessary for them to eat grain to toughen their gizzards and set up a healthy, vigorous action of their inward machinery. Chickens are naturally grain-eating beings, as they are equipped with all the machinery necessary for grinding and preparing grain for assimulation. Unless they have grain to compel such organs as the gizzard, liver, heart and secretion glands to function, one or more of these organs will soon become diseased from inactivity. The liver usually is the first one of these organs to become affected and when the liver fails to function the whole sys- . tem becomes stagnant, throwing additional work on the heart, and ‘the final result of an upset nervous system causing poor assimulation. When your chicks are two or three days old you will be able to see about what amount of heat they require and you may gradually reduce the temperature according to their needs. No one can ac- curately tell the exact temperature at which you should keep your brooder without observing the chicks. Your brooder wants to be of the type that your chicks can get away from the heat when too hot. It is seldom the case that two broods of chicks take the same amount of heat, water or feed, as they are of just a little different mechanism. Therefore, one cannot successfully raise chickens one certain way, simply because they raised them that way last season or at some other time. One can readily tell if their chicks are too hot or too cold by the way they maneuver. If they are well spread out, they are warm and comfortable—if they act dopey, droop their wings and pant, they are too hot—if they pile they are usually cold. Sometimes a few little cold-blooded things will hover together, others will see them and pile in too, more for the want of something to do than any- thing else. Keep plenty of dry, clean litter on the floor that is free from mold. Wheat straw, chopped to lengths of from three to five inches, is my favorite scratch litter, but one may use something else where wheat straw is unavailable. If it is so you can, provide free range or good spacious yards for your chicks to exercise. Unless you have plenty of outside room they will do very well kept inside a - roomy house, with a good deep litter to scratch in and a good dust bath. They are more work to care for when raised in this manner than if they had free range, but one can get by with it very well if the parent stock is free-ranged. It is better to keep your cockerels confined than to turn them out for the reason that they do not de- velope muscle, and you are not to the expense of putting on meat for them to run off. One must bear this fact in mind and not over-feed when feeding cockerels that are kept in confinement or they will get sick. Last, but not least, kill all runts when taken from the incubator, and at such later dates as they make their appearance. Protect your good chicks by not keeping DISEASE TRAPS. CHAPTER VII Preparing Pullets for Egg Production Poultrymen: and women, I hope you will appreciate the fact that I have the nerve to write this chapter in the face of the powerful criticism it will receive from people who are selling inferior baby chicks and pullets. I hope that those on whose toes I might tread will receive this in the spirit it is given, with no malice or ill will to anyone, and I hope they will be willing to submit any and all dif- ferences of opinion to friendly discussion, as I am not writing this " with the intention of revolutionizing the poultry industry, but I am a) ee discussing poultry raising exactly as I see it, courting no favors from anyone or from any place. I am writing nothing startling or sensa- tional, but just plain facts that exist and can only be found out by extensive traveling among poultry people. Being able to see and compare the different forces that are continually arising in the field of poultry raising, and after seeing and observing, I have the courage to render a just verdict. j Technically speaking, the time to commence preparing pullets for egg production is from the incubator, but I have already carried the subject up to the time they leave the brooder. In this chapter I will follow the life of the bird from the brooder, step by step, till I come to the age of five and one-half or six months. One can prepare a pullet for egg production without any definite plan of procedure or set time when they want to get eggs about as well as they can con- struct a highway from a certain point to an unknown place. In the case of raising the pullet one may have some advantage over the . former task, because when they arrive they will know they are there. There are two reasons for the poultryman raising pullets—one is to replenish the flock, the other, which should be more remunerative, is to produce sixty-cent eggs, and at the same time, replenish the flock. So we can clearly see where the poultryman who feeds his pullets eight months before getting any returns, as a great many do, is getting off, and the worst of the matter is the fact that they are March- hatched birds. Now, poultrymen. we all know that this state of affairs is due solely to the caretaker. I have had men tell me that they would never buy chicks again from A, B, or someone else, as their birds were not of a laying strain. No one can tell me but that any of the Mediterranean birds of any strain, after a century of ‘breeding, will do better than that, with anything like proper care. Many men ask for my opinion as the best time to get day-old chicks. My answer is this, five and one-half or six months previous to the time you want to get eggs. Then comes the question, “When is the proper time for eggs?’ Well, I can say without stuttering, if one wants pullets that will start and keep laying steadily through the winter and up till late the following fall without breaking down or going into a premature moult, they should not bring them into laying before October 1st. Then again, if they are not brought into laying by that time, or shortly after, it may be hard to get them laying in paying quantities before one has sustained quite a loss. Everyone cannot get their chicks April 1st; furthermore, everyone does not want their chicks at that time. For convenience it is well that they do not as even now one cannot get March and April chicks without booking their orders far in advance. Many poultrymen are doing their own hatching mainly for this reason. Others prefer to breed from their own stock so that they may know what quality chick to expect. March and April chicks come from good parent stock and can be kept coming steadily along until late September or early October until the hot weather is over before they come into laying, thereby prac- tically avoiding the moult. The January and February pullet for ex- ample, from my point of view, comes largely from undesirable parent stock such as early moulting hens and pullets, and in the large ma- jority of cases goes into a moult sometime between September and January. Many times it is a neck moult only, but it reduces the egg production from twenty to forty per cent. Then again there are cases where the moult is general, the birds dropping their wing and tail feathers, as in seasons past we have experienced some very hot weather in September, throwing birds off their feed and lowering their vitality to the breaking point. There would be cases where flocks with plenty of shade and cool drinking water together with expert feeding, would hold up. One can hold back these early birds until the hot weather is over and avoid the danger of a moult, but what does one gain by so doing? Having to feed them seven or eight months and bringing them into Le production at the same time as the April bird which has been coming steadily along and promises to be a much steadier producer by not being either forced or held back. There is a difference between holding back and not forcing. To hold any growing thing back, means stunting it. I would much rather let early birds lay in July, get three months’ work out of them and let them go into the moult than to at- tempt holding them back. For the poultryman to gamble on Janu- ary and February pullets, where he is short on money, 1s risky busi- ness. It is all right for the poultryman who has a bank account, who can predict the weather or knows how to feed in such emergencies and will do so, to take the chance. When you win, you win big— when you lose, you lose just as heavy, and then probably more often than you win. "Many of the early birds that go into late September and October moult are only laying twenty per cent in December. I prefer the pullet that starts laying in October and lays sixty per cent from Oc- tober 15th to January 1st with eggs at fifty-five cents per dozen, to the pullet that starts in July and lays fifty per cent from July 15th to October 1st with eggs at forty cents per dozen, then going into a partial if not a full moult and laying twenty per cent from October 1st to January 1st, with eggs at fifty-five cents. By carefully check- ing the different localities I find that this is about the way they run. After comparing the cost of feeding these two classes of birds and deducting this from the amount received for eggs I find that there is a difference of about thirteen cents in favor of the early hatched bird. The late March or early April bird will outdistance her on egg production from January 1st to November 1st with their eggs selling at the same price. I hope the foregoing will make clear to the reader what is meant by the preparation of pullets to accomplish a certain thing at a given time. Certain obstacles may arise that will temporarily side-track, but . must be righted as quickly as possible, working with the definite purpose of accomplishing a certain thing at a given time. I hear different ones saying in mid-winter: “My pullets are not laying as they should and I don’t know why.” The why is this, the keeper is trying to get eggs and make his pullets fit at the same time, and it cannot be done. Pullets must be prepared prior to the time of pro- duction. It this is done, getting eggs will be simplified. One can- riot take a flock of pullets composed of birds of different ages and breeding, run them all together and expect to have anything like a uniform flock when cold weather comes on. Fowls are very tempera- mental, care that one flock will thrive on will be inadequate for an- other flock of a different age and breeding. As I have already said, vigilance is a virtue of prime importance to a poultryman. At the different stages of development one will see some pullets showing indications of an insufficient amount of bone-building material, others requiring more tissue builder and still others not feathering as they should. Where one has just one ration for all birds in all conditions and ages they cannot get the results they could get if they fed properly and worked to accomplish what should be done at that time. Of course it is necessary to classify their birds and segregate them to do this, but by doing so you will be surprised at the results obtained. I see numbers of instances where quite a large percentage of pullets go into moult for different reasons and the keeper often times will add an excessive amount of oil meal to their ration to help those moulting to grow feathers, thereby throwing the balance of the flock into moult. Some men in mixing their own feed will persistently load it with oil-cake and keep a moult going continually. As soon as the birds feather and have the appearance of doing something they will go into another moult. I know of a certain man who mixes his own mash and also supplies some of his neighbors. I was talking with him during one moulting season and he said to me: “I heligte I will change my feed formula.” I asked him in what way, and he said, “I am going to add more oil-cake.” I told him the pullets for the sake of the old hens. That was all Po NO on the subject and in about three weeks all of the poultrymen who were feeding his mash had a general moult among their pullets. I met him a while afterward and said, “Well, I see by the condition of your customers’ pullets that you changed your formula,” and I fur- thermore asked him how he was going to explain himself out of it. He remarked, “Oh! that is easy enough. You know I am a salesman and by being a poultryman also, I can choke almost anything down the poultryman.” Open your eyes, men. Use your heads. They were not placed on your shoulders exclusively as ornaments. Feed- ing undoubtedly is a science that every man cannot master. In order to be a good feeder one must be a close observer and also a good judge of hens. It is better to not feed enough than to feed too much, and ‘many poultrymen knowing this, fail to feed at all for fear of making a mistake. I have been called to places to solve chicken troubles when the whole trouble was caused by not feeding. It is a hard thing to look a man or woman in the eye and tell them that they are starving their birds. There have been times when I could not do it and would ask for a pail of scratch which I would keep throwing down until some birds would walk away, then I would say to the keeper, “Do this once or twice a day for a while and watch the results.” Some poultrymen fail to realize the rapidly increasing need of more feed as birds grow older. They are very much the same regarding feed as they are re- garding fresh air. It is the poorest kind of economy to try and save on feed, either in quantity or quality, when it comes to raising pul- lets, About the twelfth week is when the beginner begins to open his eyes to some of the inside mysteries of poultry keeping, especially the financial end of the game. Methods of feeding have to be worked out that will apply to each individual condition that may exist. One may start out in any poultry colony and interview one hundred of the best poultrymen there and not find any two feeding and handling their birds alike, as no two have the same kind of blood and exactly the same conditions to cope with. Even by making experiments on one farm, with the same caretaker, the same type of houses, the same feed and apparently the same surroundings, one cannot come to any definite conclusions on the value of any specific feed or tonic as being a special requisite for health and egg production. To defin- ately ascertain the value of the experiment the birds would have to be sired by cock birds of equal vitality, equal strain, equal type, with equal egg records back of them and with equal prepotency. The dams also would have to possess many of these qualifications all of which would be an impossibility. To get the correct data on experiments of this kind it would be necessary to carry on your experiment for a successive number of years, three at least. After getting good or bad results two years out of three, or better yet, three years out of Tous, Jou 816 abies to terminate Ji a successful experiment. Ninety- out of every hundred will no have to wait too long for results. £:20 to lus trcilig a8 isy The question is, Will it pay? That depends wheth man intends to stay with the poultry ey If he does a 1 oe ing seventy-five or one hundred dollars per year on each one thou- sand hens he keeps, not knowing whether or not he is getting value received for this amount of money, it will pay him to test it.out. Again, if one is neglecting feeding or doing a certain thing which would incur an expenditure equal to the amount already mentioned because of not knowing its value, he is losing money by not trying it if he has a logical reason for believing that it might return his money double-fold in keeping his flock in better condition. The experimental stations give us the value of wheat, corn oats, meat, milk, green feed, etc. They sometimes i Bi use of tonic in certain cases, but they do not give us all that we should know regarding the value of the different commercial brands and makes of feeds, milks, tonics, etc. Neither do they advise us as to the best makes of equipment the poultryman must have. They are unable to do this for various reasons, probably the most serious one being the fact that they would become embroiled in commercial strife by recommending one manufacturer's goods in preference to another. I am evading that issue for the last named reason, con- sidering the fact that I would invite personal hatred without doing a service that would be appreciated as it should be by the common rank and file of poultrymen. I would not hesitate to answer person- ally any questions along these lines to the best of my ability, for anyone soliciting the information. Regarding feeds.—Where one poultryman would have to have the very best quality to bring his birds along in the proper shape, another more fortunately situated, with good drainage, good cool drinking water, good shade, free range with plenty of green feed, plenty of fresh air at night and milking several cows to furnish all the milk they can consume (sour the milk well before feeding), will raise a good flock of pullets with wheat and barley or wheat and corn as a seratch and a mash of mill-run. Therefore, it is impossible for ‘anyone to lay down any hard and fast rule for feeding, as one cer- tain make of mash will be too concentrated under one condition, while some other mash will not be concentrated enough under different conditions. It is not worth while to take up time and paper in saying all that can be said on feeding. As I have stated before, feeding is a problem that is up to the individual poultry keeper. The thing is to know your requirements and meet them. The most baffling thing is to know what and how much of a certain ingredient you Pe feeding when you are feeding certain grades of commercial mas There are cases in which it is necessary to feed sweet milk, but as a rule milk is more valuable for its lactic acid than for its food value, consequently feed sour. Do not alternate by feeding first one and then the other, as you invite bowel trouble by so doing. Stand- ing water is another thing that will soon breed trouble. Birds, if they have the opportunity, will persistently drink from standing pools even when they have free access to good clean water. Warm, stand- ing water soon gets putrid and unfit for drinking purposes, even when nothing but good healthy stock drink therefrom, and if one or two birds get sick and continue to drink from such places where the large majority of the flock are drinking, your hazards are increased one hundredfold. When possible have as good drinking water for your birds as you have for yourself. If you have water in troughs which are supplied by automatic hydrants, see that the troughs are well shaded and wash them thoroughly with a good disinfectant at least every forty-eight hours, and oftener if you have any sickness in the flock. It is best to do this evenings after the birds go to roost and leave them empty to air over night. Shade is just as essential as a house in pullet raising as nothing saps a pullet’s vitality faster than heat. Your pullets may be doing well and let a hot spell come when you have no shade and see how soon they will bunch together on the shady side of the house where there happens to be a little shady streak. There they stay panting for life, without a sufficient amount of food, water or exercise. In a few days possibly the heat will break, then your birds move out, drink plenty of water, take more exercise and eat better. A few days later finds them in a full moult caused by the weakening period just passed through and followed up by the consuming of large quantities of concentrated feed. Then the millman gets the blame for putting out a mash of inferior quality. It is not right to place any undeserving blame on the millman, for some of them are already overloaded with what is justly theirs. This is not all. Your birds are left in such a weakened condition that they are fertile soil for disease germs. I have been in the Sacramento Valley and found bad cases of —1Y— chickenpox and roup in the month of August. I convinced myself of the fact that it was not caused either by dampness, filth, draughty houses or through any carrying agencies. By eliminating all of these probable causes I could come to but one conclusion as to the cause of this trouble at that time of the year in a district where such dis- eases were practically unknown. On all of these places there was no shade except that of the buildings. Beyond the shadow of a doubt these birds sat around all through the hot summer days till late in the evening when they were allowed to overeat of a mash that was seventy per cent indigestible. The same thing would occur in the morning, before the heat became so intense that they would run for the house or the little black streak along the side. These birds became weakened from the heat, got indigestion from the feed, so by being in this weakened, rundown condition contracted slight colds nights when it would get quite cool, then take more cold during the day by sitting in the doorways or other exposed shady spots where there might be a draught. As a matter of fact these colds would gradually grow worse as the birds had no chance of throwing them off. Their livers were bad, their blood was sluggish and the poison broke out in the forfn of pox. Hence, chickenpox and roup. Fresh air, the cheapest of all poultry requirements, is often denied as if it cost one hundred dollars per cubic foot. Some men will pay -sixty dollars for one thousand feet of lumber besides the cost of nails and labor to make a house as near tight all around as possible. I know of a house built like this and the caretaker takes the trouble to stop the cracks in front by stuffing them with rags and he keeps burlap lying on the floor at the bottom of the door, so that no air might pass. . This is the most extreme case of carefulness that I know of. But there are many poultrymen who do not give their birds sufficient air. One square foot of air space is none too much for six square feet of floor space. CHAPTER VIII Brooders and Brooding Systems Before building a brooding system of any kind you should think deeply, make thorough investigations into all of the different brood- ing devices of any import on the market. Act slowly and deliberately and finally decide which kind will answer your purpose the best. In deciding on this most important action, you must have in mind your needs four or five years from now as well as your needs for today. A good brooding system, after once installed, i§ not a thing that can be satisfactorily remodeled at a small expense. You may think that if it is a good system you will not want to remodel it. It may be an A-1 system for certain requirements and conditions, but not adaptable to your needs. Therefore, if you listen and take the advice of some brooder salesman and plunge headlong into buying some- thing that does not and never will meet your requirements, it will be a disappointing and costly move, as the total amount expended in a brooding system amounts to considerable. It is impossible for one to decide on the type of house they want until they first decide on the make of brooder they intend to install. The house and heating device are inseparable, just as much so as an incubator (body and heater). If one expects satisfactory results in raising the maximum number of good chicks with the minimum amount of fuel, it is not at all practical to build a house, not know- ing whether you are going to use a stove, lamp, electric, pipe or some other heating system. Many poultrymen build a long laying house and brood in it as well. It is not the thing to do. It may by Provi- dence work for a few times, but in the long run one is money out both in chick loss and fuel, to say nothing of the inferior pullets caused by being stunted while little. If one must utilize all of their house room, it is much better that they build a good brooder house, re \ one that can be opened up in front and keep their hens in that until time to brood again, thoroughly cleaning and spraying it before putting baby chicks in. ; ‘In building a brooder house, build it large enough so that chicks can get back from the heat when necessary. I do not approve of a heating device that heats the whole room. I have walked into houses before now when the caretaker was busy with his little chicks and the sweat would be rolling down his face as though he were firing a furnace: Such conditions as this certainly are not beneficial to chick development. If one has such a system as this it is neces- sary that they have a large cooling room with a good-sized opening in the partition. As well as having plenty of heat and ventilation, dry floors are a very necessary requisite. Wet floors and a mouldy litter brood a great variety of diseases. CHAPTER IX Laying Houses The problem of housing fowls has probably received more study and attracted more attention than any other problem entering into poultry raising and yet the perfect poultry house is far in the dis- tance. The time will Hever come when we will have a universal house adapted perfectly to all climates and general conditions. The fact has been proven time after time that housing is similar to all other poultry problems as it takes a somewhat different type of house to meet the same requirements, under different conditions. A laying house of any kind has to have dry floors, good ventilation, be free from draught and be light. At the present time one cannot find a house with perfect ventilation. There are houses that will function in this respect under certain climatic conditions, but there are times when the air circulation is too rapid even when there is no draught. There are times again when we have to fight against hard storms by closing tighter than is good for the birds. There are other times when we may have perfect ventilation in certain parts of the house, while in other parts the air will be circulating almost to the extent of a draught and perhaps some corner will be stuffed with foul, im- ‘pure air which will be trapped by the surrounding air pressure. One may think that this is too small a matter to bother about, as this condition perhaps is only of short duration. Maybe so, but the chicken business is composed of many details. It isn’t one little thing alone that causes poultry worry but a series of little things cause fail- ure. You close your chicken house door at night and go into a nice sweet-smelling room, jump in bed, put on what covering is neces- sary to keep yourself warm (no more and no less), when probably if you spent one night with your chickens you would be sick the next day. There is a difference between outside exposure where there is no draught and the air is pure, and inside where conditions are altogether different, even though it might be much warmer inside, probably too warm. Such is often the case. A neighbor of mine has a one-acre tract adjoining my place and his brother came to pay him a visit. This brother is somewhat promi- nent in the poultry circle and he tried to get my neighbor interested in chickens, which he did for a while. The visiting brother wanted him to build a house of a certain type like that of a certain man in Petaluma who was running several thousand birds. The brothers got into an argument over the matter and finally came to me to settle the dispute. I took the stand that a man, to be successful with fowls on a one-acre place, would have to house and handle his birds dif- ferently from the man on a thirty-acre place. While the man on the thirty-acre place can give his birds all the room they require inside and out and yet have enough ground to grow ample green feed, it is necessary for the one-acre man to buy his chicks or pullets from someone who ranges his stock, then confine his chicks or pul- lets to a three or four-story house. Then he will have sufficient —21— ground to grow green feed for twelve or fifteen hundred hens, pro- viding he has the right kind of greens and gives them the right care. The subject of housing, if treated from every angle and all was said that could be said, would make a volume almost as big as Web- sters, but after all was said that could be said, one would be s0 dazed, so confused and so many beautiful ideas would be crushed that they would decide not to build at all. If I were to take the time and space in writing and describing all the poultry houses, including their furniture, that I have seen in the last three years and express my likes and dislikes for same, one would go light and throw the whole works in the fire before finishing reading. There are a num- ber of men who have hobby houses, bearing their names and each of these men believes and tries to make every other man believe that his house is the only real poultry house ever built or ever will be built, where one can get eggs, have no sickness and have practically no work to do in keeping it clean and ministering to the needs of their birds. I do not mean to be sarcastic about this matter, abso- lutely the reverse. It is only by strife, new ideas and enthusiasm on the part of a very few that we advance. This is not only true with the poultry game but with everything else as well. Poultrymen, as this is the situation regarding the housing problem, my personal views would only be like a grain of sand in the sea, but for the benefit of a few who might not already have an idea of their own, I will give some of my likes and dislikes of a few housing principles, but will not venture to come out with a new-born house at this time, any try to convert all of the poultrymen to its saving powers. ‘What we call the California University House in my opinion is one of the best houses that I have ever seen, not that I think it ideal under all conditions and in all climates, but I do think that it embodies the correct principles of a house, and it is plain and simple in every way, which adds the advantage of being able to make the minor changes in it that might be necessary under some conditions, without sacrificing the fundamental principles. If we had a house that would be suitable to every location in California without mak- ing some minor changes or giving it different settings, we would have a house adabtable to any and all parts of the United States. : Many poultrymen do not realize the fact that we have a country inside the /boundary line of California where the mercury goes sixty degrees below, as well as possessing a tropical climate with every variation between, not excluding the cold damp winds and wet fogs of the coast. Before building a poultry house so very radical from the houses you already see in a particular locality, it would be best to stick around for at least twelve months, observing the different weather conditions. Remember many failures are made in any business by one coming in with the idea that he is going to show the nBiivey how to do things before first getting acquainted with con- ditions. One will sometimes hear men argue by the hour as to how a house must set, as if the facing of the house was the all-important feature of success with poultry. It is to a certain extent, but I don’t mean by this, that all houses must face one way. One must take into consider- ation the lay of their land and the direction of the prevailing winds. There are times when one, by facing his house a certain direction, can utilize his ground to a much better advantage and perhaps com- plete the general arrangement so as to have a better systematized plant. One, in constructing a poultry plant, must always keep the labor problem in mind as well as a number of other things. I have seen different poultry plants that were successful where the houses faced every point of the compass. In building a laying house, I would not face it so that the cold fog accompanied by a stiff wind would strike directly in on the birds. I would shift it somewhat from the wind but not so far as to miss getting a little sunshine at some time of the day. Personally, I pre- fer a south exposure where possible. I like sunshine when sunshine is needed and that is in the winter time when the sun’s rays are low —29—— ¢ true that the poultryman who faces his house to the south in most arts of California will have the rain and wind to fight, but I prefer guard the front of my house against the storm and at the same time have it so fixed that I can let the sun shine in for two or three hours of days when we have sunshine. In many climates of Cali- fornia a southeast exposure works very well. Light in a house is very necessary, the more the better. It is also necessary for birds to have some sunshine, but it is not essential that they should have it all day, nor is it altogether necessary that the sun should penetrate every part of the house, if the house is cleaned and sprayed regularly. The thing is for birds to have access to some spot where they can bask for an hour or so each day. One sees so many types of houses condemned for various reasons, for example, the high front, shed- roofed type facing east. I see many of these houses in the Sacra- mento Valley, and they are not at all adaptable to the interior valley climate, where there is a variation of temperature from twenty de- grees in January to one hundred ten in August. That is why it is generally conceded that the coast climate is better for poultry be- cause the climate is more uniform the year round. This type of house gives very good satisfaction in a coast climate where the yearly vari- ation runs between forty and ninety degrees. In building dwellings in the interior valleys, to be comfortable they must be as well built as those near the summit of the Sierra Nevada Range. The solid compact house, for whatever purpose it is to be used for, is warmer in the winter and cooler in the summer. By building a poultry house in the interior six or seven feet high in the back and fourteen feet in front with a shed roof sloping to the west, with no ceiling overhead and practically a closed-in front, with the exception of a set of openings up near the roof and another set at floor level, one can imagine what the variation would be in twenty-four hours in the summer time, with the sun striking the roof direct all the long afternoon. I have seen birds stand on the perches with their mouths open and wings drooped till nine and ten o’clock before it was cool enough for them to settle down for the night, then probably just about daybreak the temperature would be around forty or fifty degrees. This same house with a decidedly east exposure gets no sunshine at all inside during the winter months when the sun is well around to the south and by being so high and with only a single wall it gets as cold inside as it does outside. Then after all of this, some poultrymen will wonder why their egg production dropped off, the birds went into a premature moult, were slow in feathering, and took colds easily. If only one generation of birds were ruined by this treatment it would not be so bad, but poultrymen will save eggs for setting pur- poses from these hens while they are getting one shock after another, and seemingly expect to raise a flack of three hundred egg pullets. If I were to buy a place with a house already on it similar to the one I have just described, I would not tear it down, because of the waste of material by doing so, and the labor cost. I would ceil the back wall, and overhead from the back wall to a point perpendicular to the front of the dropping boards with tongue and grooved Ium- ber. One would not necessarily have to have clear lumber for this but it should be free from loose knots which are likely to drop out, thereby leaving a hole. Nail the overhead ceiling to the rafters and open the outside inclosure between the rafters, from the plate to the sheathing, thereby giving a free circulation of air overhead be- tween the ceiling and roof. Then convert the front similar to that of the University House and you will then have a house at a small additional cost that will give better satisfaction by far than it ever would without remodeling. A house that is not adjustable is a failure in any climate where there is any great variation of temperature. Never build a house so that when one opens the door of a morning, i pretty much in a southerly direction at all times of the day. It is he will be greeted with that suffocating odor caused by steaming droppings and foul air which is void of oxygen. The air becomes —93— damp by the breathing of the fowls, as fowls expel their water through their respiratory organs after it has passed through the system. When the air becomes saturated with water it will no longer absorb the water from the bird’s body, therefore the moisture clings to the bird in the form of sweat and when the air strikes the bird it causes a rapid radiation of heat, chills the bird and a cold follows. With the proper ventilation this condition will not exist and the house will be dry and warm, which means less sickness, more eggs and better efficiency from feed. Blue prints of different types of houses can be obtained for the asking from the State University. First, study your requirements carefully and make up your mind which one of these houses will be the most efficient for your particular condi tions and if you are not quite satisfied with any of the plans they send you, then you may obtain plans and blue prints from different individuals, who have blue prints for sale. You can get them at a nominal charge. It is better to spend several extra dollars, if necessary, and get what you want than to build at random, and then, after you are all through, to find that you have spent needless money in erecting buildings that will always be an eyesore to you and disease traps as well. Good money spent in poultry houses is different from money spent in shoes and other clothing. In buying clothing, if you get that which you do not like you still have the satisfaction of know- ing it will soon wear out and you may get something that you like. On the other hand, when you build a poultry house, you have something to curse or to be proud of the rest of your life. In build- ing a poultry house, first be sure you are right and then go ahead. Put up a good house, a permanent house, one that will give you years of service before having to be repaired. Repair work is ex- pensive, troublesome and very seldom satisfactory. If your buildings are permanent they will give you years of satisfactory service if you want to use them that long, and if you want to sell you have something that will sell and bring a reasonable price. If you have temporary houses and want to sell, they are a liability rather than an asset. The prospective buyer will look such buildings over and think, “Well, as soon is I buy this place my expense will start by having to tear down all of these shacks and replace them with new ones.” It isn’t human nature to care well for a cheap thing after it gets old. This is the case with any and every thing, whether it is your hens, your house or your automobile. It is impossible to ventilate a shack properly or to keep the floors dry in the winter time, which is all essential for health. At this day and age sickness and disease is the thorn in the poultryman’s side, more than cheap eggs and the high cost of feed. It is better business for the beginner to go out and buy acreage, put up new buildings after his own idea and put them where he wants them, than to buy old dilapidated buildings. If one buys or builds a home expecting to make it his abiding place for the rest of his days, he wants it to be in reality everything that the word Home implies, wherever located. After the laying house has been planned, the problem then confronts us as to the size of the yards or runs we should have. This topic has been partly treated in the chapter on Breeding Stock, but we are now discussing laying houses to be oc- cupied by hens that are producing table eggs. I am opposed to runs or small yards any time or place. It is a much easier matter to care for hens under confinement than it is where they have only small runs. One will get more eggs and better eggs by keeping their hens confined in the houses during the winter months, allowing at least three square feet of floor space to the hen, and four is better. Where hens are confined constantly they will get accustomed to that way of living and are not fretful, as they are when one lets them out of pretty days and then keeps them up when the weather is bad. The changing of the elements is as a rule rapid enough without multiplying that condition by subjecting the birds to a bright sun- shine condition one day and a dark, gloomy house the next. It is — 24 “ GLE TL better for one to build his house so that it will be light and airy at all times and keep his birds in it, especially of winter time and utilize his ground for growing green feed or other crops. It is more economical, if one is situated where land is high, to put a little more money into a larger house, have the use of the extra ground which would otherwise be occupied by hens, save the cost of unsightly fences, gave the extra time which you would take in opening and closing gates and do away with the little old mud wallows that are impossi- ble for one to keep sanitary. Small runs create extra work for one by having to wash eggs, which command a smaller price by so doing. Another thing, one can not keep a floor dry as it should be where fowls are running out in the mud and water, and then tracking it Jnside. Neither will birds lay so well when they have cold, wet feet all the time, even though the sun may be shining moderately warm. . Remember that dry floors, dry feet and a contented mind are the first requisites in getting winter eggs, otherwise one is throwing - feed away. I have seen bad outbreaks of disease on places that were appar- ently sanitary but had small yards or pens. The keeper may plow regularly and even spade up close to the fences, but then will leave smail corners and narrow strips under the fences or next to the nouses which may contain millions of germs, as such moist, shady places make promulgation beds, capable of producing disease germs of various kinds without number. Birds may come in contact or even swallow these germs sometimes for quite a long period of time without deriving any harm therefrom, so long as they are strong and have plenty of vitality to resist. But the minute one of these birds gets in a semi-weakened condition weakening its resisting power. to throw off disease, it will take and spread the malady through the entire flock. Then again your feed dealer gets the blame of send- ing you out a mouldy lot of feed. By being careful one can keep a house sanitary if it has a good tongue and grooved or cement floor. A cement floor gives the best results where one places three or four inches of sand on it and puts about six inches of wheat straw on top of that. Where one insists on giving his birds yard room he should provide 100 square feet to the hen, at least, then there is a chance of keeping the ground sweet and free from germs. But one may not expect as big an egg produc- tion as where the fowls are confined to the house. One will hear some poultrymen say, “I believe in giving fowls yard room and I do it, too.” When you investigate you will generally find that they have about ten square feet to the hen. Gentlemen, such yards only enable one to get along with a smaller house to a unit of hens. One cannot get the eggs or escape the ravages of disease by keeping fowls under such conditions. Sunshine is beneficial to fowls but light is even more so. Fowls will do very nicely if they have the opportunity to bask in the sun for an hour or so each day, but they cannot stand darkness twenty-four hours of the day and do well. It is not at all necessary that the sun should penetrate every part of the house as was once supposed. There is only a very small part of your dwell- ing that gets a sun bath, yet you do not die for want of sunshine, even when you spend the entire day behind the counter or at the desk of some office. But it makes you feel altogether different when you can look out and see the sun shining and be able to get in it for a short time. If you will notice your hens in the summer time you will notice that they are looking for the shade more than for the sun. In the winter time it is different. They are then looking for the sun, to warm in as well as the invigorating effect it produces. But if they have good houses, provided with plenty of scratch litter and are kept confined, they will keep warm by exercising. They will have more pep, better appetites and lay more eggs than when they huddle to- gether in the sunshine to keep warm. When you are not feeling well and call the doctor, it may be that he will tell you that you —25— have stayed in too closely and will have to get out in the sunshine. The sunshine will do you some good, of course, but the exercise you take while being in the sunshine, will do you more good. There are places where one may have good spacious yards that will be an advantage in many ways, where the ground is unfit for cropping, has a good slope and is already covered with natural shade. . But in the majority of cases it is better for one to bunch his invest- ment. While it may cost a little more at the beginning one will save, year after year by not having to keep up fences, provide shade and lose the use of the ground which would look better growing a white clover lawn and furnishing green feed for the hens than to be covered with feathers in the fall and mud in the winter. After one has decided on the type of house that will meet his requirements, the next thing is to figure on the interior arrangements, kind of furniture to be used, such as nests, mash hoppers, water fountains, breaking coops, or jails to put your clucks in. Arrange for feeding green feed, oyster shells, grit, etc. Decide on a good location for your dust bath where the sun will shine on it for a few hours each day. Have your house so you can change litter without causing any more confusion among your birds than necessary. Of course, these things are prearranged to a certain extent as each different house has its own individuality inside as well as out, making it more convenient for the fixtures to be placed in certain places in the different houses. But again, you may have some differ- ent and better idea of where and how these things ‘could be arranged to make less work for you and maybe, at the same time, make more room for the birds. Mr. Poultryman, remember this .is to be your workshop, as well as a house for laying hens, and it stands you well in hand to have your house arranged so you can accomplish your work well with the minimum amount of labor. No doubt, while you are building you will think that you have perfection itself but you will see the faults plainly enough when you get inside, performing the every-day duties of the poultryman. Have nothing inside that affords a perching place for hens except the perches themselves. If you do, after three months of cleaning you will agree with me on this one thing, if on no other. Have your water supplied automatically, and your mash hoppers so you can get your feed to them easily from the carrier wheelbarrow, or what other means you have of transporta- tion. These are problems that must be worked out by you as you are the one that will have to do the work and your likes and dislikes will probably be different from mine. I do not intend to get myself in bad by laying out definite plans for arranging the interior of your house, as I know of too many men who have made themselves famous by doing that thing. There is time for me to do that when my ad- vice is solicited. As I said regarding brooding houses, the perfect house has never yet been built. This applies to laying houses as well. I will say in conclusion that good judgment must be used in constructing poultry houses of all kinds. They must be serviceable. To be serviceable, they must function in every way, as I have here- tofore said. If one goes to extremes in the cost of a house, the excess money tied up will create an excessive overhead, whereby one will not be justified in keeping poultry for the production of commercial table eggs. If one uses good judgment he can erect buildings that are serviceable, neat appearing and permanent without yielding up a vost amount of money. I see houses that are nothing more than shacks, and to the other extreme, I see houses with floors of concrete made with a six-inch base, which is heavier than two- thirds of our state highways. Besides this, every stick of lumber on the inside is clear stock, where number one common would answer the purpose just as well. Knots do not interfere so long as they are tight and will not drop out, leaving a hole. CHAPTER X Feeds Feeding is one big problem that confronts the large majority of poultrymen. Men, STOP. Think what you are feeding, what you are feeding for and how you are feeding. People themselves eat such things that please their taste and satisfy their hunger. The general analysis of the food they eat amounts to little with them so long as it has a good flavor. A dietician will prepare and combine the food that is required to keep the body well and supply heat and energy. They have a brain that tells them this is the proper thing to do, whether or not all of the different things they eat are relished so very well. The hen is very much like the first class of human beings spoken of, but fortunately most of the things she likes are the things she should have. Men, unless you understand a hen from her toenails to her comb, you must not expect to be able to feed her as she should be fed to get the maximum number of eggs, and at the same time, preserve her vitality. If a hen has the proper environ- ment and her physical wants are properly cared for, one can not keep her from laying. The act of accomplishing this thing is a much easier task, and at the same time, a cheaper operation than a good many poultrymen think. ~ I do not believe in cheap things, using the word cheap as it is commonly used. Cost should be measured by results rather than by the first application of the word. For instance, one may feed a very low-priced feed and get very little or no results; consequently, it would be expensive feed, and they might buy high-priced feed and get big results; consequently, it would be cheap feed. I do not mean by this that the highest-priced feed is always the best, as I have just said the only way to determine whether the price is high or low, is by figuring egg cost per dozen. Certain manufacturers and salesmen will try to talk you into believing that a mash must have twelve or fifteen different ingredients in it before it is capable of keeping up the bird's body and supplying enough egg-making ma- terial. One can prove this is false by more ways than one. One may take a mash of this kind, and if it were possible for you to take half of these ingredients out, put each one you take out in a separate hopper or container, you would find that a bird would not eat one pound in a year from any one of these containers holding what you class as cheap fillers. When a bird refuses any ingredient separately, how can you expect it to relish a mixed feed with this and a half dozen other such ingredients in it? Again, there are certain ingredients in some mashes which birds relish but are very harmful to the birds’ health and of no benefit for egg production. If these things were of any real value, either as body builders or egg makers, I would say, make the hens eat it. The three or four ingredients that really do the work are the ones that the hen relishes and will eat without coaxing. There is little wonder that some men have to feed tonic to their birds constantly to keep their appetites so that they will clean up the mash hoppers. After the hen gets all of this fertilizer, fiber and hulls of different origin in her crop, then is when her real work begins—that of digesting it. After her digestive organs are worked down, her general system becomes clogged and her blood stagnant, the poison begins working out of her system in different ways, some of which I have already mentioned, including chickenpox. Not saying that the feed is the sole cause of chickenpox, but the feed is a factor to be considered. If you doubt it, when you get a case of chickenpox take all mash away and see how much easier the disease is to handle. Lose your eggs? Yes. You lose your eggs nine times out of ten, any way you do it. You will perhaps take issue with me here and say, “I did so-and-so and my hens did not go below twenty-five per cent while they had the pox.” Maybe not, but why not stamp the thing out at once? Is it not better to lose all of your eggs for three —27 -weeks than to lose half of them for three months? One will not cure chickenpox by taking the mash away, but it- will help as much as any other one thing one does. There are good, clean, well-balanced mashes on the market, but there are others, too, which are good for nothing. If the poultrymen do not get wise to themselves, before long there will be nothing but the good-for-nothing kind. The man who is turning out an honest product will soon tire of drumming for trade and making twenty cents profit per sack, alongside the man who is turning out a mash composed chiefly of cocoanut, rice bran, ground walnue shells, peach pits, etc., and making one dollar per one hundred profit. The poultrymen alone are responsible for cheap feed, or I should say poor feed, for they are forever clamoring for low- priced stuff, and low-priced stuff they will get if they constantly buy the lowest, for no house is going out of business simply because its wares are too good when it is possible to cheapen them so as to compete with the more successful competitor. It is very possible at this time, while good laying mash is worth around $2.60 per 100 pounds, to make a laying mash that can be sold for $1.50 leaving a fair profit to the manufacturer, but I hope the poultrymen will never attempt to load his birds upon such low-grade stuff. Many poultry- men are making their own mash which costs them more than the commercial mash. They evidently do this because they are getting, or think they are getting, better results by so doing. By the time one figures the cost of material in their mash plus the cost of mixing they will find that they can buy a ready-mixed mash of equal quality for the same money if not a little less (except the poultryman who thoroughly understands balancing a ration). Some poultrymen will buy a commercial mash that is composed of high grade materials and well balanced, then they will throw it all out of balance with the foolish idea of adding some cheaper ingredient or by putting in an extra amount of meat. A man who does this will never have a good feed, because all commercial mashes are very nearly perfectly balanced as they stand, so far as carbohydrates and proteids are concerned (such as they are), but the man who adds bran or meat, or both, is only making the burden heavier on the birds, as he has not reduced the amount of indigestible matter which may already exist prior to his rebuilding process. A man that will attempt to do a thing like this cannot be trusted in making a mash after his own ideas. There are men who can make a first-class mash but such men do not use a commercial mash as a basis for their own. They make it entirely by their own systematized methods and when they are through they have a balanced ration, built expressly to accomplish certain things. In mixing a mash one must be able to mix it intelli- gently. If not, they are fooling away good time and money and ruin- ing their hens as well. Where one can buy A-1 raw material they might. figure on making their own mash at a saving but there is the same chance of getting swindled on raw material as there is on the ready-mixed mash. Men, you will never get your money’s worth out of any feed ready mixed, or otherwise, so long as you keep changing feed every time a new salesman calls on you with a mouth full of smooth words. Many times talk is very expensive and the poultryman invariably pays the bill. You should be the judge as to whether or not you are getting value received on your feed. Compare your results with those of your neighbors who are feeding the same and different feed than ycurself. Do not take just one for comparison but as many as you can. After finding and tabulating all of the different results, before jumping at conclusions and giving one certain brand of mash the credit or discredit, investigate the other conditions and ascertain whether or not the different results were obtained from the feed, the method of feeding, the quality of the stock, housing conditions, general care or what other factors there may be that might figure in the results. After you have determined which mash is giving the better ‘results as a whole then settle on that mash and stay there even though there may be times when you are not getting the best —28— results by one reason or another, but first search for the reason ~ outside the feed, if you ever had any confidence in ‘your feed. Where one finds a commodity proving its merits for one man and not for another the trouble can most generally be traced to some under- lying cause other than the commodity in question. Ones weakness may be in many places outside their feed. Wherever one gets poor results, as a rule the first thing they do is to blame it to the feed as that is much easier to do than to search and rectify the real cause. Where one has a grievance against a certain feed, they can always get condolence from the competitive salesman who is waiting for some- thing to happen, and is delighted to find you with a grievance sco that he can sting you good and proper, as he is aware that your time on his feed will be short, only until some other salesman comes along with a nice little talk and you will switch again. Where you stand by one house, as a usual thing that house will stand by you and rectify any troubles or differences that may arise if it is any- where in the bounds of reason to do so, providing of course it is a responsible house you are dealing with. If all poultrymen were men of staunch integrity, they would get more favors from the house. They would get cheaper feed and better feed as well. Poultrymen, you alone are responsible for present-day conditions, when you are paying more for talk than you are for feed value. All that is necessary is to put out a poor feed at little cost and a good man to sell it and it will sell, at the same time a house may put out an A-1 feed and unless they put out the talk, too, their feed will not sell. If poultrymen bought their feed strictly on its value rated by the results obtained for each one hundred cents, they would soon get rid of supporting the gang that makes it their business to advise you. The feed houses would then have to give you the best article obtain- able in order to hold your trade and then we would have real compe- tition, competition in feed and not in talk. One may get a poor lot of feed occasionally, regardless of whom they buy it from, this cannot be helped. Occasionally we get a bad sack of flour, a bad can of milk, a bad lot of beans, a bad lot of potatoes or a bad article of any commodity we buy, whether it be feed, groceries, clothing, hard- ware or dry goods. The manufacturers of all these commodities make it their business to see that every article is inspected before leaving the factory, but regardless of all the precaution that is taken an’inferior article will occasionally slip through. I am speaking now of honest business and not of fake, catch-penny business. I know of feed houses that keep a chemist for no other purpose than to analyze the different grains that go into their mash, "as all wheat does not analyze the same. Neither does corn, oats, barley, commer- cial meat scraps or anything else for that matter. Grains vary in analysis according to soil and climatic conditions, the same as the amount of sugar varies in sugar beets, fruits or grapes. Where there is no check kept on this, you seldom get two sacks of mash balanced the same. But while some mills are so exacting in this respect, they have to ride hard just the same, to stay in the saddle against the competition of low-grade feed that is selling for a few cents less than theirs. One sometimes gets a lot of old mash which has been in the bot- tom of the pile for sometime, but the same thing is liable to happen with any brand of mash and does not warrant a change of mash by the one who is lucky enough to draw it, although if I were the unlucky one in getting a quantity of such mash, I would notify my dealer to come and take part of it off my hands and make a more even distribution of same. At the same time I would request him to make some reduction on what I kept, so the burden would be lightened all the way round. It is nothing more than right for the warehouse to take part of the loss on such goods, as they are respon- sible for its deterioration, by not cleaning out the bottom before putting new stock in, or by buying heavy on a low market, necessitat- ing the holding of part of it for a considerable length of time. —20— Nature provides the grain with a very dense shell or covering beneath the outside hull which holds the nutriment of the grain 1in- tact. As soon as this inner hull is broken the nutriment commences to depreciate, so it is very easy to see what happens when the grain is ground, stacked and stored in piles consisting of hundreds of tons in one pile. Most usually this mash has a considerable amount of corn in it, which will heat to a certain extent, possibly not enough to cause it to mould, but it slowly and surely goes through the deteri- orating process just the same. If the corn in such mash has not been thoroughly seasoned before grinding, it will kill chickens as pretty as anything I know of. CHAPTER XI Feeding and Handling Hens for Egg Production The whole life and fabric of your birds depends on breeding, good feeding and good treatment in general. It is disgusting for one to travel throughout the country and see the way thousands of birds are handled. After doing so, little does one wonder why certain men complain about there being no money in the poultry business. But I am not ready yet to treat on that subject. The topic is feeding and proper handling of birds for egg production. Men, if you cannot make your birds pay by feeding the best of feed you surely cannot get by with chaffy, mouldy and smutty feed. If you have a fine flock of hens or pullets that have been brought up in good shape and they go to the bad, what is the cause? Well, I will say without hesitating that it is caused by poor feeding, poor management or both, as the two go together. The poultrymen of California spend thousands of dollars every year for tonic to keep their birds in shape and many of them mistreat their birds unmerci- fully, throwing full dead weight on their tonic to pull them over, and if it fails to do so they then blame the tonic. You may feed all the tonic your hens can consume and unless you give them rational care along with it you cannot expect to get through without trouble and countless loss. A while back I was talking with a man about the lowered vitality of our stock and he said, “The only thing to do is to breed for eggs and raise the vitality by proper care.” In my estimation this man was as far from the right idea as the north is from the south. Proper care is the only way to maintain vitality, but one certainly can never generate it any other way than by breeding. I am for breeding for vitality and caring for the birds in such a way that they will lay a profitable number of eggs without killing thirty or forty per cent while doing so. Getting eggs is an act accomplished only by scientific feeding after one has acquired the stock that will respond to good keeping. Yet many poultrymen just shovel out the feed and expect the hens to lay with that. Sometimes they will, but more often they will not. A poultryman has to study the needs of his flock and feed accordingly. If you get started off wrong either by handling or feeding an inferior feed do not be afraid to get right, even though it may cost you a few eggs in making the change. You will more than make up the loss later. It is better to lose a few eggs for a week than to keep on playing a losing game all through the year. I do not mean by this for one to be changing feed every time the moon changes, but get right and stay there. Get right before the high prices come in the fall and winter so as not to change at that time. One has ample time to do this if they watch and act ac- cordingly. A feed that brings eggs from your old hens from January to No- vember, will bring eggs from your pullets from September to Novem- ber of the following year, the only difference being they won’t con- sume an equal quantity. One can hear some poultrymen say, “I know I am not getting the eggs I should get, but I am afraid to change my feed for fear it will cut down my egg production.” If you are not getting the eggs you should get and feel positive that the feed is —30— at fault, change it as I have said before, even if ; you do sacri fow pees, but if it is your feed at fault and you begin to mix iy pint mat D Sradually before the old is gone, most likely your egg yield Lg ua y come up instead of going down. Of course one must x a, sare ul in making a change while hens are laying. A jolt i Jo Bl ect egg production one way or another. If the hens are oy 3s ig ly, a jolt will bring them down every time. If they are Rot aying, many times a jolt will start them, providing they are in Ying condition. The same rule applies to the changing of mash gram: greens and living conditions, as all of these things will give rds a jolt. How many times is it that you have turned your hens Ou in the nice warm sunshine after a protracted rain, and lost forty: il ; ty per cent of your eggs for a day or two. Did the sun do them ha m? 0, not physically, but it produced that soothing effect on € nervous system which stopped the eggs until the bird became jectstomed to the new life again, when up went egg production higher an ever before because their nerves were quiet and their blood was functioning properly. The condition of the blood and the ner- vous system are two wonderfully important factors in egg produc- Hon. You never see a discontented hen laying many eggs, because 4 Ssonem Shafters ihe Nerves aid shattered nerves upset the diges- ’ e we i Flas ich (me we ave a combination that is hard to Poultrymen, if you will notice your grain feedin i closely and not. be always ready to complain about 22 litle move will find that you will get just as many or more eggs than you do now and at the same time reduce your losses, your work and your worry To start with, feed a good standard mash, one that has proven ability, Hien See that your hens have the proper amount of the right kind i n. You will have to judge your hens individually to determine : 8. You cannot feed your hens ten pounds of grain because Jim Jones is feeding tem pounds and getting seventy per cent eggs. either can you feed ten pounds because you fed ten pounds last year and got good results. A hen must have a certain amount of flesh in order to produce eggs steadily. She must have enough feed to maintain that flesh and at the same time create a surplus of nutri- ment for egg production. If this hen is not laying, the surplus is stored away in the form of fat, and if she is laying, unless the care- taker is on the watch, the fuel goes low and the hen will finally have to draw on her body for egg material, at which time if not given attention she will gradually go below the point of equilibrium and fail to any longer produce eggs, go into a moult and perhaps into I B or take some form of bowel trouble and die. One hears many Poul Tymen say, “It is my best hens that are dying.” Most assuredly A great many poultrymen’s grain ration is fix regulate their birds with mash. Try the opposite Ep I vince yourself which way is the better. Fix your mash ration by keeping it before the birds in a dry state at all times, examine your birds occasionally by taking them up in your hands; guess work does not go in the poultry business any more than it does in any other business. If you see your fowls are pretty heavy and not producing as they should, increase the amount of scratch litter and reduce the amount of grain, feeding grain of an evening only. If your birds commence to lose flesh, add more corn to your scratch. Do not be afraid of corn ; it is a mighty good feed. Some poultrymen are so afraid of corn for fear it will burn their birds out, but some of the same poultrymen will dope their hens with pepper, ginger, mustard carbolic acid, sulphuric acid and even muratic acid. Any one of these things are good in their place, but their places are far apart One should use judgment with everything they do. The same thing applies to epsom salts. Salts are all right when rightly used, but many poultrymen have the habit of feeding salts every so often with- out giving a thought to the action of salts on the system and blood The only thing they have in mind is a physic. Some men g0 so far as to feed salts as a substitute for green feed and it is folly to think of such a thing.. Salts is a great cleanser but it thins the blood faster than anything you can give. At certain times of the year, along about the time hot weather is coming on, a bird’s blood usually needs thinning, but I have seen men throwing salts into their birds of late fall and winter at a time when a bird should have plenty of good rich blood to keep up the heat of the body and to resist disease, and one cannot expect a bird: to successfully go through the winter with nothing but water in its veins. Before doing anything for a bird, first ascertain what ails the bird, then before treating it study the effect that certain remedy will produce, both good and bad. If you find that the good results will outweigh the bad, go ahead. Never doctor a well hen. Segregate those that need a treatment of some kind and treat them, and as a preventative use a well-balanced ration of good quality, fresh drinking water, fresh air, pleaty of exercise and plenty of green feed. A tonic of the right kind will build up your bird’s appetite and causes a better assimilation of the feed and will do a great deal more than pay for itself, if used at times when it is needed. Good tonics, though, are not numerous. I have watched the effect of different tonics under so many circum- stances that I could not conscientiously recommend more than two. that I believe to be beneficial at any time, and that is saying a great deal, owing to the number of different so-called tonics on the market. One may materially increase his egg production by soaking barley or oats till they are well sprouted and feed while the sprouts are still white. Noon time is a good time to feed sprouted grains of any kind, and feed what your birds will clean up in about ten minutes. In knowing whether or not hens are in laying condition one has to judge the weight of his birds by the ones he knows to be. good pro- ducers. Those that do not lay heavily will put on fat while the good bird is wasting away. These beefy ones are worth more to the butcher than they are to you, yet there will be a small per cent of your birds go light from various reasons, other than by heavy laying. Neither can one judge the flock by these. They are to be gotten rid of also as they are only disease traps. Remember, a good poultryman rarely lets a hen die a natural death on his place unless she drops dead while apparently in good health, Make the hen do her part in keeping well by always having six or eight inches of litter on the floor and when it gets wet fork it out and put in new. This will cost you some money and labor but so will roup and chickenpox cost you money and labor. Sometimes one will hear a poultryman complain- ing of his birds sitting around on the perches all day and not exer- cising or eating much. Here is where a good tonic is beneficial in stimulating the appetite, and hens can be induced to scratch by scat- tering a little grain in the litter two or three times a day; not too much at a time so that they will fill themselves and get back on the perches. After a few days of such treatment they will begin to liven up and will work without such persuasion. Spraying is a thing that is just as essential in the winter time as it is in the summer. Many poultrymen slack up on spraying in the winter time because vermin are not so bad. Remember one has winter plagues to fight which are equally as destructive as summer vermin. Spraying is a long step toward hen health; this is especially true of chickenpox. There is not one house in twenty that I walk into where I can smell any odor from a germicide. The average poultryman fights the vermin every step of the way because he can see them when they are present, but it is different with the disease germ. He usually does nothing about this until it multiplies a millionfold and begins to get in its deadly work. It is up to the poultryman to do two things and to commence doing them now. That is to exterminate disease by breeding for vitality and initiating better feeding methods. The enormous loss of stock by diseases caused by low vitality and forcing methods of feeding are the losses that are swamping the poultrymen more than the high price of feed or the low price of eggs. If we were to use one-fourth of this blood money in stamping out FHT Rit disease and building up a strain of birds that thi 8s country is worthy i the pouliey business would immediately bo on a sounder financial asis, enabling a poultryman to go to the bank and borrow on the Seturly which he really possesses. At the present time the banks a on the man and not on what he possesses in the way of live Likewise, when the poultryman wants time on feed, as a usual thing the dealer sizes up the man when he comes into the store, and is ready to say yes or no right off the bat. He inquires h hens the man has, to ascertain the extent of ro Raed, Fon pid than to find what security there is behind the transaction. Where money or feed is extended on security other than the poultryman’s face, the security comprises real estate only, although the legal papers may include stock worth so much, but, Mr. Poultryman, do not forget that the real estate is worth the incumbrance even though the live stock vanishes. As I am not a vet. I am not going to attempt to write at length on poultry -diseases and temporary relief meas- ures. There are already books written by competent medical men who make their money that way and can serve those who want such service. As a rule the egg farmer does not spend much time doctoring the individual fowl that is kept for egg production only. The time taken for such work may be spent to better advantage somewhere else, as it generally takes some time for such a bird to get back on the job after one has apparently affected a cure. The ~ majority of poultry ailments, which need attention, may be prevented and cured by the proper feed and handling. Ther . eases which sometimes break out in a BEE, i are al us diphtheria and chickenpox, which should have a flock treatment more than an individual treatment. Such diseases as these must be con- trolled in a manner so that they will not spread. Proper handling of these diseases will obviate a lot of work and lessen the mortality as well. I have a system of treating flocks of birds, without individual handling, whereby I can stop the spread of roup in twenty-four hours and cure every bird that has not reached the stage of swelled head. If chickenpox accompanies the roup, individual handling will be necessary. This information will come out in a later publication of mine in book form. This is not the proper time and . mulas and besides, there are many poultrymen who a ace I» Sate Suh. he dreaded goceidiosis has at last been brought under ’ ere 1s no need of me takin wanse, effect and cure of this thing. £ Spats in describing the ut remember this one fact, poultrymen and poultrywom when we get the class of birds we must have, in will _ hat need for cures, we will then raise our yearly egg production and have much better birds at the end of the season. In burying birds that have died with contagious or infectious diseases I will say this, one might just as well bury a gopher alive and expect to get rid of it as to bury a fowl and expect not to have a repetition of the disease she died of if it was of a contagious or infectious nature. The damp- ness and heat created by the decaying body makes an ideal spot for the germination and multiplication of germs, which have numerous ways of finding their way to the surface. One may just as well leave the bird on top of the ground as to go out in a hurry and bury it twelve or sixteen inches deep, as many poultrymen do. The only way is to burn every bird that dies on your place. When you spray, and that should be often, spray with a good germicide, do not waste time and money by spraying with some simple thing to merely con- trol insects and vermin and to put a nice odor in the house. Make a spray strong enough to be effective, but not so it will burn your birds. A good spray can be made with carbolic acid and water or Iysol and water. Carbolic acid and lysol are the two favorite germi- cides used around hosiptals and they are equally as effective around the poultry house. Place your dry mash hoppers as far from the drinking fountains as possible, so as to force the birds to exercise by going from one —33— to the other. Make the interior of your house just as unhandy for your hens as you can and at the same time make it just as handy as you can for yourself. The main idea is to induce your birds to exercise every .way possible. There are times when they will not exercise even when given the opportunity, unless they are induced or forced to do so. If at any time your hens are apparently in tip-top condition in every way, but keep putting you off from day to . day with that egg, take good plump oats and steam them till the hull is soft, then add all the cayenne that the birds will eat readily and feed this while it is pretty hot, all they will clean up. Do this every morning till they start laying and then stop. If the birds are in laying condition it is not likely that you will have to go through this performance many mornings. Corn is one of our best friends if fed with judgment, but we can overdo any good thing. One cannot feed corn by guess, as you have to watch your birds while feeding it. In my travels I see flock after flock going light and I never see a poor bird laying. Sometimes I see fat ones not laying, but they will not lay at any time or in any condition, if they did they would not get over-fat unless the fat was taken on just after the moulting period before getting started to lay. Conditioning or preparing an old hen for egg production following the moult is a finer piece of work than preparing a pullet. One has to start this preparatory work while the vitality is at the lowest ebb of a bird’s life, on an upset nervous system and with less time to work if you get your hen in the money-making class. After recover- ing from the moult the hen will pass by the point where she should begin laying unless the caretaker is right on the job. After she passes this point, even though it may be only three or four days, it will be a somewhat troublesome matter to feed her for eggs and not at the same time cause an excess accumulation of fat. We let many of our best birds go into a moult in July and August, a condi- tion that is altogether uncalled for, for the mere fact that we fail in conserving our hen’s vitality at a time when she needs the best of nursing instead of having horse meat thrown into her. h One may watch a long freight train pulling out of Sacramento. It rolls along nicely with but little power until after leaving Roseville, making the climb for the summit, and there is where the steam is apt to run low. Exactly the same principle exists with the hen. The day she starts laying is the day the poultryman should begin to watch his steam gauge. Heavy egg production through the months of March and April is not the only drag on the hen’s vitality, but the hot weather comes on in many localities and there is nothing that saps vitality faster. At this early season of the year one can hear the poultrymen say, “Well, my hens can get along now as they have plenty of greens and the weather is good, they are laying sixty per cent.” Poultrymen, well and good. Conditions are as they should be in this respect, but keep your eye on your reserve vitality, for there is no relaxing time for the poultryman. This is the season of the year when both hens and pullets unite on the firing line and it takes good generalship to take them over the top with the minimum of mor- tality. Many of these generals get behind them with a can of horse meat and a barrel of so-called tonic and say, “Go.” After, perhaps the pullets have had lights all winter which were turned on at sunset and left till nine-thirty, then turned on again at three-thirty in the morning. I have watched them go till one-fourth of them reached the burying ground, till one-fourth of them were dragging their rear ends on the floor and what was left of them went to the market at twenty-five or thirty-five cents each. By examining the general’s accounts you will find that he made money while his hens lasted. The main trouble about such a system is that the hens do not last long enough. Such a system of producing eggs reminds me of the story of the darkey who one day met his old friend Rastus, who greeted him by saying, “Hello. Sambo! how you makin’ it?” Sambo replied, “Fine! fine! nigga, makin’ money twice a year. You know I'm in de cattle business and sell my hay in de fall and my —34— hides in de spring.” As a matter of fact ‘we all know that one has to get eggs if they make a go of the poultry game, but a very im- portant factor is wrapped up there and that is to get all the eggs you can at the lowest possible cost per dozen. That is precisely what one is not doing when he is spending money for lights, money for medicine, money for froth, money for milk, money for meat and money for tonic and then lose forty per cent of the birds outright and sell the little thin carcasses of those that survive for a mere nothing. Some of these things I have mentioned are all right when rightly and properly used. I might mention lights, for instance, as a great deal is being said on this subject at the present time. The question whether it pays or not to use lights on birds is being widely dis- cussed. Debates are merely a disease of the brain. Any man can bring himself to a certain way of thinking by a little effort, and then arrange words to express that thought forcefully enough so that the average man who has not given the subject serious consider- ation will believe it. The only logical way to determine any ques- tion pertaining to poultry husbandry is to make an extensive investi- gation and decide according to actual facts obtained in the investi- gation. The facts that I have obtained justify me in saying that lights, like most all other good things, are overdone. I have watched the effect of lights on fowls from every angle and will recommend the use of them to this extent: Do not put lights on your birds until the second season, then turn them on at four o'clock in the morning, only. At night time let your birds go to bed naturally. When lights are put on pullets they will not respond as they should the second and third seasons, if one keeps them that long. This is speaking of the average bird. Birds with an abundance of vitality will re- spond, while those with less vitality will not, because there is nothing left after the first year to respond. There are birds with not enough vitality to respond the first year, let alone later. One can hear some men say, “I can force my hens from September to December and make good in that time.” Maybe so, but if they make good at that time and want to replenish their entire flock every year, which they have to do when the birds are forced heavily, why not sell off in the spring, before the mortality starts, or the birds get so much under weight? The man who does this and raises his own pullets, can be classed as a poultryman, but the man who knows nothing about raising good pullets and depends on buying pullets that some other man’s skill has produced, puts them in and forces them to death in a few months’ time and enriches his soil with the carcasses, cannot be classed with the poultryman. He is not worthy of the name, for he is only wrecking or gutting the poultry industry, to say nothing of the diseased birds he throws on the market for human consumption, which practice should be a State Prison offense. The person or persons who buy such stock to sell for human con- sumption should be forced to eat nothing but diseased chicken till the party of the first part is released from prison. The poultryman who takes a pride in his stock, looks well to their every interest and at the same time sends nothing to market that he would not eat himself, is a true poultry gentleman and worthy of any man’s respect, but it takes one with a love for the game to be able to do this. Poultry ranches should be inspected by an inspector the same as dairies, slaughter houses and other places where food is manufac- tured, prepared or stored for human consumption, and I believe that any good American citizen would agree with me on this subject after following my tracks a week. As a matter of fact, we have to feed for eggs to get eggs, and as I have already said, we have to get eggs if we stay in the game, but it is quite possible to get eggs by a sanitary method and at the same time save the hens. One will always have a few birds that will not stand even the moderately heavy feeding that is necessary for heavy egg production and one cannot hold back the ninety-five per cent which can stand it, for the five per cent which will break down. But —35— a en a 0 AP when one sees ten or fifteen per cent going to the bad it is time to look around. The ship has sprung a leak somewhere. 1 want to again call the reader’s attention to the folly of feeding a stimulant to his birds steadily to force egg production. For instance take a bird that is in a weakened condition and stimulate her into egg produc- tion, one gets eggs at the expense of the bird’s body only; she is much weaker after laying an extra clutch of eggs through stimula- tion that she was before. This hen is now down to the point of a moult if not death; she has been sacrificed for approximately one dozen eggs, worth anywhere between fifteen and thirty-five cents. The only reliable tonic is one that builds tissue, increases assimila- tion and last of all causes a mild stimulation of the ovaries. Mr. Reader, get all three of these points, do not subtract, if you do you will get one of the following results: a fat bird and no eggs or a few eggs and no bird. There is a great deal to be said pertaining to feeds and tonics that can be treated only through private correspondence. One cannot very well publicly assail any company’s products where that company is operating within the law; but where my advice is privately asked concerning the results of different things, I am per- fectly free to give that information. CHAPTER XII Culling Culling is one outstanding feature in the poultry business that is being neglected as much if not more than any other by a large number of poultrymen who are carrying large numbers of birds and complaining most about the poultry business. The most significant thing about this is the fact that every experiment station in the United States has for years been trying continually to hammer this most im- portant thing into the poultrymen. Yet there are numbers of poultry- men who have not grasped this most important idea. The idea of wanting to be Chicken King has seized them so strongly that it is like pulling eyeteeth to get them to part with a line bird. What IL mean by a line bird is one that neither affects a profit or a loss to a very great extent. Hundreds of flocks in California, and I suppose in other States as well, are water-logged with such birds. I have culled birds and I have seen the State cull birds where one-third of the culls were turned back the day after, and if a flock of culls would lay a few eggs during the next few succeeding days a great howl would be heard, that the one culling did not understand his business. Pos- sibly that might be so in a few cases, but no doubt it is better busi- ness than not culling at all. It is better business to sacrifice a few good hens than to keep the same number of drones. I have seen cull birds, culled at the season when they were laying more eggs than their better bred sisters, and the owner perhaps would contend that they were his best birds, the eggs being his evidence. These culls were laying at that time according to nature and so were the crows laying. While the birds that were not laying so heavily at that time had been working months before these culls began to think of laying and would continue to work long after the cull were in the moult, providing their vitality was kept up. To be able to cull without fear or favor may save one more than once from bank- ruptcy. Bear this in mind, too, Mr. Poultryman, do not wait until the twentieth of a certain month to cull your hens and then cull whole- sale, birds that are not laying, birds that have not laid for sixty days, and birds that you figure will stop laying in thirty days. If you have a man working for you and he lays down on the job, then is the time when you let him go and not before. Do not feed a three- pound hen three months when it is costing you twenty cents per month to do so, in order to get five of ten cents per pound more for her and then maybe not get it. Study your chickens, work with them, live with them and make pals of them. This is the only profitable way of handling chickens. A while back I stopped at a —36— ip place that was carrying three thousand hens and I asked the lady of the house, where the boss was. You poultrymen could not guess in a year where she said he was and what he was doing. Well, the answer was this: “He is working in Oakland and will not be home until after dark.” Poultrymen, if I had three thousand hens that looked like that bunch I would not come home until after dark either, and furthermore I would do my best to get away before daylight. I will say this to the man with three thousand hens and who must hold an outside job to make a living, to get out and stop spoiling the game for those who can play it. No man can run chickens and - hold an outside job at the same time except the man who is running a few hens as a side line and lets his wife care for them. The wife can handle a few hundred hens very well if she is not burdened with several children and the husband can get time to empty the feed and do the cleaning. Excuse me for drifting, I will come back to the job of culling. As I have just said, do not put off culling till some set time, but cull whenever the conditions justify. Have two separ- ate places for culls, a place for each of the two classes of culls which you will have. The market is not always the place for culls. Often- times the best bird in the flock may go bad, due to improper feeding, improper housing conditions and low vitality caused from excessive. egg production, sometimes combined with hot weather. Such a bird should be put in a place of renovation, be built up, and in a very few days she will be back to work again if taken in hand before she is on the verge of a moult. Take the bird of tke non-producing type and put her in the pen in which you prepare your birds for market. The time to commence culling is when you take the birds out of the incubator and the time to stop is when you haven't any to cull ‘When you put your little chicks in the brooder put in nothing that is not lively and active. Size at this time is not so important. Watch them carefully day by day and as weaklings appear get them out. When your backward broilers are ready for market, put your back- ward pullets in too. This leaves you with a clean slate, you are taking a new start with a different flock, different conditions and a newer hope. The next step is to put leg bands on the first twenty- five per cent that lay. After the flock has been laying for some time and ninety per cent of the birds have pale shanks and beaks then cull all that have bright yellow shanks and beaks. After this has been done watch the perches of mornings and capture every bird that is bashful about getting down, examine each one carefully to ascertain whether she is fit to be prepared for egg production or for meat. Most likely she will go for meat at this stage of life, but a little later on a good many of this class can be given careful at- tention and in many cases they will make long distance layers. A pullet at the stage of life when she is coming in, often gets a back- set from too much or too little feed, fright or catch a cold that may settle in her ovaries. By the proper handling, many times they recover and give a good accounting of themselves. As time goes along, cull every one that goes into moult before September, except the twenty-five per cent which you leg-banded earlier. When you see any of these birds dropping their feathers, take the tip and begin to do something immediately to preserve their vitality. Many times these early layers will moult early by having low vitality caused by heavy production and are sold on the market for meat. When the whole flock goes into moult about the same time, you can then take your eye off the birds and put it on yourself. If you find no fault there, then you may place the blame to high temperature or changeable weather. Do not forget the fact that a general moult ifs often caused by poor judgment in feeding as well as feed that is not of the proper kind and other conditions that may figure in the case. ’ We have been culling continually now up to September first (the bird is about eighteen months old), yet we are not through, there are yet birds that will develop characters that can be read in their —3 7 faces, telling us their value as future egg producers. This is the season when a good part of our birds are getting ready for their vaca- tion, some have already quit work. It is also a time when one must not stake too heavy as to whether a certain bird is fit or not to keep over into another laying season, by judging her by the distance of her hanes, as her bones will begin to contract at this time and remain closed until it is almost time for the bird to go to laying again. This is the dormant stage, all of the generative organs being inactive, the bird’s strength is all taken up by growing new feathers, renew- ing her blood and building new tissue to replace that which has worn out in the last few months of hard service. The thickness and flexibility of the bones will tell a story if used in combination with the characters on the face. The head test will obviate time and is just as accurate if not more so, than bone measurements in culling birds. One may take a flashlight and go along the perches at night picking out birds that have coarse, masculine heads with hair on their faces and those that are full and puffed from the base of the beak up to and around the eyes, till the eyes have the appearance of being set back in the head. This is caused by a dropsical condition and indicates the bird's digestion. and blood is bad and few such birds ever lay many eggs, except in the months of March and April, when everything lays that has an egg-bag. When you get one that you are in doubt about, examine her bones for thickness and flexibility. One will not only save time by using this system but they will leave all of their good birds unmolested and by so doing they will not de- range their egg production. These best birds will have feminine, ‘clean-cut heads, distinctly hollowed between the beak and the eye, giving the eye the appearance of protruding and they will also have broad, flat backs and the body will be of a. wedge shape. One will not need five or six thousand birds of this type to make them a living. When these birds get back in shape again for egg produc- ‘tion and you happen to have any that have white shanks before the flock has been laying a while, cull them out and dispose of them as they are birds with little vitality. From this time on repeat the system from time to time as birds break. One will have a few birds that will run these tests for from three to five years. I have had en say o me, “If I culled {hat way I would not have a bird left a e end of two years.” that is so they w pocket if they didn’t have any. y would; be money In Where one is not making $1.50 net per hen during the worst of years, something 1s wrong somewhere. Men, if you are not doing this, stop laying back and saying, “There is nothing in chickens.” But roll up your sleeves and look for the broken cog and if you can- not find it, no longer pride yourself as being a poultryman, for the game is not yours. Culling by this system one is compelled to do their own culling, which they should do anyway, as they are more familiar with the birds’ conditions and general handicaps than the man who comes in knowing nothing of these things. In order to do this effectively you will have to study your birds’ mechanism, pick two extremes and compare them and it will not be long till such work will automatically fall into your routine if you were really cut out for a poultryman. While working around your birds it only. takes a few minutes to hook out three or four that you know are not making you money and one will get well paid for this little time spent. Always remember such birds are eating hard-earned money ng dinghy nh If Ofte follows these instructions it e a frea rd indee at will i ix- ’ eo Dork oy be able to slip a six-months CHAPTER XIII Is There Money in Poultry ? The question most frequently asked of me b i 1 1 y people outside of the poultry ring is: “Is there money in poultry?” Well, you poul- —38— trymen know how it is and how painful it is to have to answer a question of this kind. Before answering I size up the man or woman from their shoe soles to the crown of their head, feel of their craw for grit and judge them by all appearances except Hoganizing. One might just as well ask if there is money in fruit, alfalfa, truck gar- dening, stock raising, clothing business, grocery business, manufac- turing business or any other business. There is money in the poul- try business for some people but not for all who engage in it. We see evidence of this on every hand and we hear it said that more people go bankrupt at the poultry game than at any other business. I will not dispute that, for one starting the poultry business usually has a shorter distance to go than most people going into other busi- ness. If as many people started in other lines of business such as I have just mentioned and started with as little capital and as little knowledge of the game as countless numbers who start in the poultry game, this perhaps would not be so. ' Now do not laugh, old timers. Frequently I meet some one who has three or four hundred dollars and they will say, “I am going into the poultry business. I have an idea of my own how poultry should be raised.” That is no fairy tale, they have; but it is not 80 very long before they have another idea. The poultry business like all other business, is composed of people of every nationality on the globe, with all kinds of habits, traits, minds, ideas and systems. Many of these people have hit their calling, while many more are fit to be ministers, lawyers, bookkeepers, accountants, clerks, truck farmers, bartenders, road house keepers, etc. After eliminating all of these different classes, one will find a prosperous bunch of poul- trymen. They are not millionaires, of course, but they have com- fortable homes, plenty to eat and wear, and most years are able to lay a little aside. "I do not mean to say that the genuine poultryman particularly has a brain either superior or inferior to any of these classes mentioned, but I do say that they apply themselves better. For instance, everyone who does anything worth while, will occa- sionally make a mistake, but the one who is the best fitted for the poultry business will search for his mistake and find it; he never jumps at conclusions and therefore he seldom makes the same mis- take twice, while there are others who go on making the same mistake year after year. In some lines of business one will finally get built up to the stage where their hazards are not so great as at the beginning. They are carried along by momentum to a great ex- tent, while with the chicken business it is different. One may be in the chicken business twenty years and have 20,000 birds, with all the necessary equipment for carrying on the business, and by getting a little careless or neglectful even for one day, the bottom may drop out of the whole thing. It is entirely possible for any poultryman to come to grief within twelve months’ time by mismanagement, regardless of the length of time he has been playing the game. I have heard it said that the poultrymen were the most panicky class of people living. There are times when they have good reasons to be panicky. The good poultryman sits with his fingers on the pulse of his business and notices every change in the price of wheat, corn, oats, barley, laying mash, meat scraps, mill run, rice products, nails, lumber, shingles, incubators, brooding equipment, eggs, poultry, con- ditions of growing crops, immediate supply of grain, supply of eggs in storage and the prospective outlet for same. The poultry busi- ness is not a concentrated business, on the other hand there is no business more diversified. All of the foregoing items are factors to be considered in the successful management of a poultry farm be- sides other things, such as rodents. vermin, disease, etc. Many men raise poultry with one idea in mind, namely, eggs. To be sure that is the objective, but when and how is the best way to get them, is the question. The manufacturers pull for heavy production when raw material is cheap and the demand for the finished product is strong, leaving the longest possible margin between cost and selling price. Are —39—. you running your egg factory that way, or are you working your machinery sixteen hours per day, without oil, at a season when eggs are worth fifteen cents per dozen and grain speculators gambling on the weather? Are you leaving your machinery in a state of overhaul- ing at the season when these grain gamblers are dickering with the farmer for his wheat, barley, corn, etc., at a price which will hardly equal the cost of production, and eggs worth thirty-five or forty cents per dozen. I know many poultrymen who figure on having their machinery all torn down at this time, getting ready to make a hard run after their raw material has been gathered in and the price ad- vanced. At this time it costs the egg manufacturer anywhere be- tween eighty cents and a dollar fifty cents to manufacture one dozen eggs on an old machine that has seen one year of hard service. The new machines are making, or should be making, a good profit, but the overhead on the entire plant is absorbing a good portion of it. It is true that many commodities such as I have enumerated are fixed factors to be dealt with and the price fixing is beyond our control, but when we come up to an immovable object, the only thing to do is to look for the most feasible way around and not stop and think there is no way. The one thing to remember is that egg production is largely under your control and the thing is, to get them at a time when a large percentage of these factors are in your favor. One can no more progress with the poultry business blinded to these facts than they can walk blind-folded in a straight line to an objective of any kind. There is a failing class of poultrymen who are natural born commercial men, buying and selling is their game, but they fail on the other requisites of a poultryman. There are others who are wizards at brooding, raising stock and getting a large egg production at certain seasons of the year, but they may not get the eggs at a time when there is an opportunity of making the maximum profit or they may not be able to buy advantageously, therefore they fail or barely scrape out a living. The man or woman who possesses the greatest number of these qualifications, is the one who will win in times of close competition, when other will have to go. The poultryman who sits tight and just simply gets table eggs with feed bought from hand to mouth on the open market will never accumulate great wealth. The wide awake poultryman who possesses ability along all lines of poultry raising and at the same time can look into the future and tell whether to sell his stock close or to borrow all the money he can and buy more and keep on buying and selling is the winner. There is one requisite that the man who buys and sells hens for egg production must have and that is to be an A-1 judge of a laying hen, otherwise failure is his. There is a good field open here for all who have the ability, as the able ones are not plentiful. I will relate an instance which occurred to me one time while I was on the road with a well known poultry tonic (which was very much to my discredit, but since have been forgiven). I drove into a place and looked at the man’s birds and they did look bad. I tried to sell him some tonic and I am sure my tonic on those birds at that time would have worked wonders and also made that man a friend of mine for life, which it finally did do. He said, “No, I won't take your tonic today, as I have thoroughly made up my mind to try so and so.” In about five weeks I stopped in to see him again and he met me with open arms and the first thing he said was, “I want your tonic today. I have been feeding that stuff and it has not done me one bit of good.” I looked at his birds again and took his order for a considerable gnantity of tonic. I must confess (as I am in the habit of doing now) that those birds looked fifty per cent better than they did when I saw them before, so one month later when I called on this man, his birds were in the pink of con- dition and laying fine. He said to me, “That tonic of yours is cer- tainly the candy.” Yes, men, it was good for birds in just such con- dition as his and would have brought them along from the start, but if my tonic had started them and he then changed to the other, the other would have gotten all the credit. —40—- This man was an averagely good poultryman, too, but he was a poor judge of stock, and there are hundreds of others like him. There are poultrymen who blame the feed for all their troubles. One can hear them say, “I fed good high class feed this year and didn’t get as many eggs as Jim Jones, over there, who fed the cheapest kind of feed. I do not believe one feed is any better than the other.” This man does not consider for a moment that Jim Jones may have had better birds to start with, may have culled closer, may have been more regular in his cleaning, feeding, etc. Probably if Jim Jones had fed the same feed as his neighbor and he had fed the same feed as Jim Jones, the results would have been quite different, and if they had fed the same feed the results would have been different also. The idea is to study your bird and be able to note the changes, good or bad, without counting the eggs. The amount of money the poultrymen are throwing away every year by buying this, that and the other thing, is a shame. If they would regain their equilibrium and settle back to poultry culture on a sound basis, using good com- mon sense in everything they did and stop listening to everyone ‘who comes along telling them what a wonderful new invention he has for making hens lay, they would be far better off. The great talk of some of these men coming around with something to sell, is what wonderful results such a one is getting over there somewhere beyond the hill. Men, if that man over there is getting such won- derful results, you will soon see him riding by in his super-six. When you do, then it is time for you to try and pattern after him, but not before. There is a certain man with a line of goods who uses the columns of the papers pretty freely in throwing such a spray of corral dust that it blinds the Dublic to his goods. By read- ing these articles, one not familiar with the ground would suppose that thousands of poultrymen were making their living by using his product. Sometimes I wonder if it is not that product that is knock- ing the bottom out of the egg market, if so, the users are keeping it a secret, maybe for fear others will also find out its wonderful power and completely swamp the egg market by using it. “Aa Ss Hig Ba : HR Hi TE : : LE EinER Btn E HA Fil i fii fi i naa: isiats g TRL 3 Rataaisai ube neiing tds § RRR IREITNIN PM-1 3%."x4"” PHOTOGRAPHIC MICROCOPY TARGET NBS 1010a ANSI/ISO #2 EQUIVALENT flo Ei ks = lw M— 26 MES l= l= fi ls 1.25 |i 1.4 .6 BLOC pe SE oi is - dobbbiitia bd LTE i = ir ba v i oi i yr ¥ el ii hy : H i 8 i pi Mn x i ! i EEE ir , ? Li n bi I eS AAAI. @® , = HT ae | END OF TITLE