Poultry Book - A Guide for Big or Small Poultry Keepers, Beginners and Farmers

CHAPTER I

THE BEGINNER

A GREAT number of poultry experts are of opinion that the novice, fresh from books, or clerical labours, the Stock Exchange, or public speaking, should leave poultry farming alone and attend to his business. This is too sweeping an indictment. The idea that unless you are born amongst poultry you will never make a success of poultry keeping is as open to argument as the other no less popular, and no less mistaken, notion that any one can make poultry pay. It does not follow that because a man is town bred he has no interests far removed from his particular profession or trade or immediate household. And it need not be assumed that he cannot acquire a working knowledge of poultry keeping as of any other interest or hobby calling for a certain amount of application, self-sacrifice and energy. It is equally certain, however, that success will be dependent upon the knowledge gained and experience acquired in conducting what is a complex business.

The qualities which make a man successful in any trade or profession are in all probability the qualities that will make him successful at poultry farming. The failures among poultry keepers—and there are not a few—generally belong to the class who would not make a success of anything, plus those who have attempted operations in excess of their experience or capital. The poultry keeper does not need to be inspired by genius, but he does need those qualities without which even inspiration and genius produce only disaster. Energy, regularity, method, clearheadedness, ability to make use of experience and rapidly to acquire a knowledge of his subject, and a freedom from slackness, laziness, and self-indulgence, are the characteris tics he must possess. He must be up and about early in the morning—every morning—with all his wits about him, quick to take advantage of sunshine and warm weather. He must keep up a living interest in his work, giving personal attention to his charges, watching their development, noting their condition, their state of health, and their habitations. He must train himself quickly to detect signs of ill-health or deterioration in the birds and to track down the cause. He must also be prepared to recognize that poultry keeping is a business like any other, in so far as the keeping of detailed and scrupulous accounts is concerned. Every penny received and expended must be accounted for, as it is only in this way that he will have the slightest knowledge of whether he is running at a profit or a loss. He must have the capacity to act quickly and to take no end of trouble to secure the end he is aiming at.

Now, all these qualities, whether he knows it or not, are common to the successful man of business, and most of them—anyway on the mental plane—to the successful man in any profession. Those persons who have grown accustomed to taking orders and acting on instructions without accepting full responsibility for their acts should examine their mental and physical outfit very closely and honestly before embarking on a career that is going to make considerable demands on them. They must not be misled by enthusiasm. Enthusiasm will suggest the existence of all sorts of admirable qualities—superabundance of energy, quick-wittedness and the rest—which will vanish when the novelty has gone and the industry has taken on the nature of work instead of play or experiment; when crises have to be met, difficulties dealt with, and disappointments philosophically accepted. Persons who go in for poultry keeping do so for a variety of reasons. There may be a desire to live an open-air life in the country, to get away from town life, offices, books, trade and monotony. The idea of poultry keeping is seized as a means to this end. Now it is this class of person—to whom the idea appeals as only secondary to that of getting away from town—who is most likely to take a too optimistic view of its difficulties. A proper estimation of them, and of the demands on labour, time and thought which poultry keeping entails, might cause him to reconsider his plans before it is too late. But the novice who proposes to start poultry keeping as an alternative to some other trade or profession, that is, with a determination to raise poultry on a paying scale, will, anyway, start with a clear view of what he is undertaking. He will also be quite clear on the point that no business or industry is ever built up without a steady application of labour, brains and money. These remarks do not so much apply to those people who are going to try their hand at poultry keeping without making any drastic changes in their regime, that is to say, who are not going to make a business of it. They are addressed particularly to those who are intending a definite change from one way of earning a living to another; or to those, whether it means earning a living or not, who mean to attack it from that standpoint, and with the proviso that it must be made to pay

Here may be stated that some of the most successful poultry breeders commenced their operations in a small way, gradually extending as they learnt the business and found it profitable. As a rule, these continued the work on which their living depended, until such time as they were justified in giving up one for the other. To that stage the poultry were supplemental. Not only so, but large numbers of poultry keepers maintain their operations on that basis, thus securing an addition to their ordinary income. Such is the case, also, with farmers as a class, whether the number kept be large or small. On farms poultry form part of the live stock kept, in accordance with the scheme of cultivation.

THE NOVICE

The novice, with no practical experience whatever, who has decided to experiment in poultry keeping, may make a start in one of several ways. Of course, if he is going to get his first practical experience in someone else’s poultry yard, or by going as a pupil to one of the many poultry farms that take pupils, the question of how to begin will be, to a large extent, solved for him. But I am thinking more particularly of the beginner who proposes to make his first practical acquaintance with the subject on his own ground and by the application of his own intelligence. In the first place, then, I cannot too strongly impress upon him, no matter now large or ambitious may be his scheme for the future, to experiment on the very smallest scale during the first season. Just as much can be learnt, at any rate at first, by the keeping of a dozen fowls as by keeping a hundred.

Unless he is dogged by unprecedented luck, there are certain to be losses in the first year. Losses through faults in incubating, mortality among young chickens, devastation by rats and other enemies. Wastage by unsuitable or uneconomical feeding, errors in the treatment of stock birds, too much attention paid to well-meaning but mistaken advice from other people, and many other wastages that, even with the most detailed theoretical knowledge, it is impossible for him to foresee. Let him, therefore, reduce the possibilities of loss to the minimum. And in poultry keeping this does not so much imply a reduction of possible gains as a similar proceeding would do in most other businesses.

LARGE SCALE OR SMALL SCALE

Poultry keeping, unlike most industries, does not increase its profits in ratio to its extension. It has been demonstrated how poultry keepers who have started in a small way and made a success of their enterprise have often attempted to increase their businesses and enlarge their activities, in many cases only to meet with failure. So-called backyard poultry keeping is always a highly profitable work because the proportion of expense and trouble to the number of eggs produced is infinitesimal. It is a most dangerous fallacy to regard the profitableness of household poultry keeping as a guide to poultry keeping on a business scale. There is a very obvious explanation of this. Directly the work assumes something more of the nature of an industry it becomes increasingly difficult to keep down expenses. House scraps, which are sufficient to feed a small flock housed in the garden or yard, are not going to be available to the tune of a hundred or so birds. The food bill then is a consideration which, hardly entering into the concerns of the household owner of half a dozen fowls, is of the greatest importance in determining the profitable running of the poultry farm. There is the question of plant. Incubators, foster mothers, and other apparatus must be secured. Houses and sheds must be erected. Extra assistance will be found necessary, especially if chicken raising and table birds are going to form part of the scheme. There is the matter of securing land. A fair acreage of good soil cannot be dispensed with. The produce has to be marketed. Packing and sending off eggs, preparing and dispatching table birds, are matters which have to be systematically dealt with, and, if necessary, extra labour must be employed for the purpose. A large and continuous supply of goods to the market must be kept up if profits are to be maintained.

The disappointments following the almost inevitable mistakes of the beginner are naturally much less where a smaller number of birds is concerned. The whole business is apt to seem so simple, as in a sense it is, that the optimist, who has read a book or two on the subject, is often inclined to plunge into large-scale poultry farming rather than waste a season as it seems to him in learning what is so obvious. But nine times out of ten he will prove to have been wrong. The very simplicity of poultry keeping is its danger. Many essential facts are so simple and apparently obvious that the writers of handbooks are apt to take them for granted. It is true of poultry keeping, and of almost every other practical work, that much of it can be learnt only by doing, and many things can be learnt only by making mistakes.

Having decided, then, to start on a small scale, what are the alternative methods? There are quite a number of alternatives, and there is something to be said for each of them. We may buy half a dozen young hens and a cockerel of the breed and strain most suited to our programme. By this method we may hope to get eggs almost immediately, some of which we may begin to hatch as soon as one of our hens becomes broody, and so make a start at building up a stock entirely of our own raising. Or we may buy in the spring a broody hen and a sitting of eggs; or a broody hen and a dozen day-old incubator-hatched chicks. Or we may start with half a dozen young pullets just starting to lay, postponing until the following year any attempt at raising fresh stock of our own.

If the object is to treat the first year as an education period, then I strongly advise that the first of these alternative courses be followed. It has the great advantage of carrying the beginner gradually and by easy stages through all the ordinary processes of poultry keeping, beginning with those which call for the least skill. It calls, however, for a little larger initial expenditure than does the method of beginning with a broody hen and a sitting of eggs; but, as against this, it has the economic advantage of yielding an almost immediate return.

SELECTION OF GOOD LAYERS

Great activity and eagerness for food are characteristics of the good layer. The tail is carried high and the eye should be bright, should stand out boldly and should not appear sunken between the brows.

Most good layers have a prominent but fine comb, which should never have a coarse meaty appearance.

The condition of the plumage is a sign generally to be relied upon, the feathers must lie compactly, should feel firm and hard when handled and must possess a fine sheen.

The legs and beak in a young pullet should be of a good colour, if insipid the bird is in poor condition.

THE AGE OF FOWLS

In the young pullet the skin of the legs and feet is supple and the scales are fine and lustrous; as the bird becomes older the scales become hard, thick and coarse and the toe nails, which in the young bird are sharp and polished, become rough and worn. The face of an old bird has a shrivelled appearance, these wrinkles increase with age. Under the wing of the pullet will be found long downy hairs, and fine pink veins show on the surface of the skin; after the bird is a year old, the surface of the skin shows a clear veinless white, and the hairs disappear.

CHAPTER II

BREEDS AND STRAINS

IT is important to call attention to the need for selecting breeds which are suited to the particular branch of work it is intended to develop. Having decided whether to go in for egg-production, or table poultry, or a combination of both, the next step is to secure a breed which will be most likely to give the desired results and which is also suited to the soil and to the general environment.

Rather than to start by experimenting with breeds, it is better to choose such as are known and recommended by experienced poultry keepers, always with an eye on any differences in prevailing conditions. Do not start by having several breeds. Choose one or two and develop these. The wisest course is to find out the breed most popular in the district it is proposed to work in, and to begin with this one, concentrating on the development of first-class strains, rather than to speculate in races whose habits and characteristics are less likely to be suitable to the locality. Other breeds can be introduced later for the purposes of experiment if it is wished, but not until the business is firmly established and there is room for experiment. The principle of keeping to one or two breeds is a good one commercially, inasmuch as the produce marketed will have some general quality in common with the other produce in the same district, which will go towards recommending the district as a whole, and giving it some, sort of reputation.

[C. Reid, Wishaw. Photo by]

LIGHT SUSSEX

[C. Reid, Wishaw. Photo by]

BUFF ORPINGTONS

No matter how much we may supplement or alter the environment to suit the needs of a certain breed, we shall find that some individuals will prosper in a much greater degree than others. The egg- and flesh-producing capacity of different birds of the same breed will vary as much as the intelligences of human individuals of the same race. But whereas human people have different vocations for which their degrees of intelligence fit them, poultry have no such choice. They are wanted for one or two purposes, i.e., egg-producing or flesh-producing. Therefore, an important work of the poultry keeper is to develop the strains showing the greatest propensity towards the required end, and gradually to eliminate those individuals not conforming to the standard.

To develop a strain the best individuals of a flock are selected for breeding, and of the second generation a careful selection is again made, and so on. The combination of pairs of birds, each having some highly-developed quality, is designed to produce a higher average in the flock.

But danger arises in the possibility of the strain becoming exhausted and deteriorating, and external and other signs of decadence have to be watched for. Undesirable characteristics inherited from earlier ancestors may spring up in a later generation. In all attempts to mate birds in order to develop some desirable characteristic, it must be borne in mind that there are always some unknown natural factors which may have the effect of upsetting the best calculations, and that in any interference with natural selection we must be prepared for disappointments. A due amount of caution will, therefore, be used in contriving the matings, and in watching the results. Crossbreeding for the purpose of combining a good characteristic common to birds of different breeds, or for the production of a new characteristic in one or other of them, is carried out with very good results. But the value of the crossbreeding is lost after the first generation and a constant crossing of pure-bred birds is advised, and not a perpetuation of the resulting cross, except that hens may be so used mated with pure-bred males. Breeds with violently contrasting characteristics should never be crossed. Fanciers, of course, adopt most elaborate systems of matings, which it is not the purpose of this book to discuss, the object here being to give as much valuable information as is possible from a strictly utilitarian point of view.

Breeds Suitable for Egg-producing

The best layers are usually of the non-sitting breeds. That is to say, the maternal instinct is either undeveloped or suspended. There are naturally individual exceptions to this rule, but for all practical purposes it may be assumed to apply to most of