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I know a man who bought a timbered tract because it was cheap and who scraped up the droppings to sell by the barrel to his neighbor, who used them to fertilize his cabbage patch and in turn sold the poultryman cabbages to feed his hens, at 5 cents a head.
The poultryman has been a disciple of the poultry papers and poultry fanciers of the day. The poultry papers and poultry literature has generally been supported by poultry fanciers and manufacturers of incubators, patent nests and portable houses. The good folks have vied with one another in complicating the business.
One successful poultryman I am acquainted with gives, as the first feed, dog biscuit crushed. All the small grains are good if they are cracked so that the chicks can eat them. The standard mixture sold by poultry men under the name "chick food" is probably the best. It consists of cracked wheat, rye, and corn, millet seed, pinhead oatmeal, grit, and oyster shells.
Amen. So be it. Signed, D. Coffin. My father followed the sea, and bred me to it. He came from Devonshire, near Exmouth. N.B. He used to say the Coffins were a great family in Devonshire, and as old as any; but it never did him no good. He was an only son, and so was I, but I had an older sister, now dead. She grew up and married a poultryman in Quay Street, Bristol. I remember the wedding.
A contrasted lot reveled in corn, potatoes, hominy feed, oat meal, corn meal and fresh cut bone. The results were in favor of the latter ration by a doubled egg yield. To any experienced poultryman the reason is evident. The variety of the diet and the meat food are what made the showing. About the same time the Massachusetts Station planned a similar experiment.
Individual feeding with the hen as sole judge as to what she shall eat, which means each food in separate hoppers and free range, is the best system of chicken feeding yet evolved. The duty of the poultryman is to supply the food, giving enough variety to permit of the hens having a fair selection. In practice it will pay to add granulated bone for growing stock.
The truth of the matter is that the fancier fails to appreciate the spirit of pure science. The scientist, enthused to find his white fowl re-occur after a generation of black ones, is wholly undisturbed by the fact that the white ones, if exhibited, might be taken for a Silver Spangled Hamburg. Mendel's law as yet offers little to the fancier and less to the commercial poultryman.
If he is one of those prospective pleasure and profit poultrymen who propose to disregard all facts of biology and economics of production, you may save yourself the trouble of showing him the rest of the plant. Unfortunately, this scheme is not open to the poultryman who has breeding stock for sale.
The man making a specialty of the city end can sell ten to a hundred times as much produce as one poultryman can produce. With a group of poultry farmers working co-operatively, or a large corporation having contracts with producers, the producing and selling end can be brought under the same management advantageously.
Food cost alone is usually mentioned in figuring experimenting station poultry profits, which statement will undoubtedly cause a sad smile to creep over the face of many a "has-been" poultryman. The writer remembers an incident from his college days which illustrates the point in hand.
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