Chapter V: Management of Fowls (2)

For some seventy or eighty years, but more especially for the last thirty or forty years, the most conspicuous phase of the poultry industry in America has been the widespread and continuous movement to develop large plants of this character. There has been no time, for a quarter of a century, when poultry plants of this kind, which to the uninitiated appeared to be highly profitable, have not been numerous. The owners of many of these plants have claimed that they were making very large profits, and their claims have led others to engage in the business, following in every detail the methods in use on some large plant which they suppose is very successful. So, while well-informed poultry keepers know that these methods are not practical on a large scale, except in a few limited lines of production, there is in the business a constant succession of newcomers who try to operate egg farms and breeding farms and combinations of various lines by methods that are not suited to their purpose.

=Common type of intensive poultry farm.= The ordinary special poultry farm is a run-down farm upon which have been erected the buildings necessary for the accommodation of from four or five hundred to two or three thousand fowls kept in comparatively small yards. The buildings are nearly always neat and substantial, the fences strong and durable. The arrangement of the plant is orderly, and, when well stocked with fowls and kept clean, it presents a most attractive appearance. The houses and yards for adult stock, the incubator cellar and the brooder houses, the barns and sheds, and the dwelling of the owner or manager occupy but a very small part of the farm--usually from one to three acres. The young chickens are grown year after year on the nearest land not occupied by the permanent buildings and yards. In most cases the land is so heavily stocked with them that they secure almost nothing by foraging.

The routine of work on such a farm is very exacting. The fowls can do so little for themselves and require so much extra care that the poultry keeper knows from the start that he cannot make his business pay unless he gets a very high production. So all his efforts are devoted to this end. He uses labor-saving appliances, carefully systematizes his work, and by great effort often succeeds in making a fair profit for a few years. It is at this stage of his progress that the poultry keeper of this class does the boasting which misleads others. Then things begin to go wrong with his stock. His eggs do not hatch well, because his chickens, while nominally on free range on a farm, have really been no better off than chickens reared under ordinary conditions in town. His chickens do not thrive, because they are weak and the land is tainted. He himself is worn out with long hours of work and no holidays, and if he does not realize his mistake and close out the business in time, it is only a question of continuing until his income and credit combined no longer suffice to keep the business going.

This in brief has been the history of all special poultry farms where intensive methods were used, except the duck farms and the several classes to be described farther on in this chapter. By no means all succeed to even the extent described, because a great many people who go into the business have so little capital that they have to give up the business before they have been able to make it show a profit. When the owners have capital, plants are sometimes operated for years at a loss, but it is very rare indeed that a poultry farm of this kind (except in the classes to be described later) is continued for more than seven or eight years, and few of them last five years. Those who wish to make a poultry business permanent must adopt other methods.

BROILER GROWING

The desire for what is rare and costly is a common trait in human character. In nothing is it more plainly displayed than in the demand for food products out of their natural season. An article which in its season of abundance is a staple article of diet, within the means of all but the very poorest, at its season of scarcity becomes a luxury which only the wealthy can afford.

Before cold-storage methods had been brought to high efficiency, there was a period in the latter part of the winter and the early spring when young chickens were very scarce. The number that could be hatched with hens to meet a demand at this season was small, and those who were hatching autumn and winter chickens by the natural method found it more profitable to keep them to sell as roasters late in the spring and early in the summer.

=The "broiler craze."= A little before 1890, artificial incubators being then first brought to a perfection which made them popular, some poultry keepers began to hatch chickens in the winter to meet the demand for early broilers. Those who were successful made a very good profit on what chickens they had ready to sell while the prices were high. Most of them operated in a very small way, taking up this work simply for occupation when they had nothing else to do. Many were gardeners who had just about enough slack time, after the harvest of one year was over, to hatch and grow one lot of broilers before beginning their regular spring work.

These people were not under any delusions about the limitations on this line of production. They knew that the demand for very small chickens at very high prices was limited and easily satisfied. But, as usual, the published accounts of what they were doing set a great many people to figuring the possibilities of profit from such a business conducted on a large scale. For a few years the broiler craze affected nearly every one interested in poultry keeping. Thousands who never engaged in it were restrained only because of lack of capital or inability to adapt it to their circumstances. Many people who had been through several unsatisfactory ventures in poultry keeping thought that they saw in this the one sure road to wealth, and began to make plans to grow broilers in large quantities. Besides these business ventures there were countless small ones, sometimes conducted under the most unsuitable conditions. People tried to grow broilers in living rooms, in attics, in all sorts of unheated outbuildings, and in house cellars to which the daylight hardly penetrated.

=Present condition of broiler growing.= The production of broilers as a specialty did not last long. The improvement in cold-storage methods soon made it possible for speculators to carry over large quantities of summer chickens, and the poultry keepers in other lines could easily arrange to produce all the fresh broilers that could be sold at a good profit.

ROASTER GROWING

=Description of a good roaster.= To roast nicely, a fowl must be full-grown and well filled out, but young, soft-meated, and fat. A fowl is "ripe" for a choice roaster for only a short period after arriving at maturity. When a pullet has laid a few eggs, her flesh becomes harder and is never again as tender and juicy as it was before she laid an egg. When the spurs of a cockerel begin to harden and to grow a long, sharp point, and the bird becomes boisterous and quarrelsome, the flesh becomes dry and tough and is not fit for roasting.

=General and special supplies.= From July, when the earliest farm chickens are large enough for roasting, until about the first of February, when the last of the late-hatched farm chickens disappear from the markets, there are nearly always enough very good roasting chickens in the general market receipts to supply the demand for that class and grade of poultry. Then for four or five months there are no fresh roasting chickens on the market except those grown especially for this trade. This line of poultry culture was developed first near Philadelphia, in southern New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania, about forty years ago. The chickens were hatched with hens in the autumn and early winter, each grower having only a few hundred. They were sold not only in Philadelphia but in New York and Boston, and in smaller Eastern cities where there was a demand for them. They were, and still are, commonly known as Philadelphia chickens.

=Large roaster plants.= After incubators came into common use, the production of Philadelphia chickens increased, but a more remarkable development of that line of production took place in Plymouth County, Massachusetts, just about the time the broiler craze started. The growing of winter chickens had been carried on to some extent in southern New England in the same way as in the vicinity of Philadelphia, but the local supply was small and irregular until artificial methods were adopted. Then, quite suddenly, the industry developed extensively in the vicinity of Norwell, Hanover, and Rockland. Its growth was remarkable, both because of the number of people who were successful on a comparatively large scale, and because it attracted almost no attention outside of this district until long after it had become a well-established local industry.

The methods of the roaster growers in this district are very intensive, but as originally developed their business was not a continuous line of intensive poultry culture, nor is it continuous now except in some cases. For many years after the business began, the growers bought the eggs that they incubated from farmers whose flocks were kept under good conditions and were strong and vigorous; but as the numbers engaged in growing winter chickens increased, the supply of eggs from the farms was not sufficient, and some of the roaster growers began to keep hens to supply a part of the eggs they used. Later some produced all the eggs for hatching that they needed for their own use, and a few sold to others also. This, however, can be done only by those having quite large farms. Some of the most successful growers have only a few acres of land and do not attempt to keep breeding fowls.

Hatching begins in August or September and is continued until all the chickens that can be handled are hatched. If the eggs hatch well from the start, a large grower may have his houses full by December, but usually it takes until January to complete hatching, and sometimes it takes longer. The price paid for eggs for hatching is only a little above the price of market eggs, and the buyer takes all the risks of poor hatches. The chickens are kept in warm brooder houses as long as they need artificial heat, then they are removed to cold brooder houses of the same type or to colony houses. Those who have land enough use mostly colony houses. While in the heated brooder houses the chickens are fed in the regular way--with mixed ground grains, either dry or moistened, and small whole or cracked grains. After they leave the brooder houses they have cracked corn, beef scrap, and water always before them; for green food they have cabbage or the winter rye or grass growing on the land.

As the object of the grower is to have chickens that will grow large and remain soft as long as possible, the breeds used are principally Light Brahmas and Plymouth Rocks, although when eggs of these varieties cannot be obtained in sufficient quantities, Wyandottes are used. The cockerels are caponized when they are about two months old. A capon does not grow a comb or spurs, nor does it crow. If a perfect capon, it remains always soft-meated and may grow very large, though it does not, as is commonly supposed, grow larger than a cockerel within the time it is usually kept before being killed. An imperfect capon will after a time grow a comb and short spurs and, though sterile, becomes harder in flesh than a perfect capon. An imperfect capon is technically called a _slip_.

About the first of March some of the earliest pullets may begin to lay. From that time all the pullets that begin to lay, and the slips as they appear, are marketed; all others are kept, because the grower realizes the largest profit on those that can be marketed in June and July, when the price is highest. By the middle of July, at the latest, everything is sold. The poultry keeper then begins to prepare for the next crop of chickens by taking up all his fences, plowing land that is not in grass, and planting it with winter rye or cabbage or some late garden crop. Rye and cabbage are preferred, because the rye will remain green all winter and furnish green food for chickens that have access to it, and the cabbage makes the best of green food for the little chickens in the brooder houses. It is just as good for the others, too, but not many of the poultry keepers grow enough to continue feeding it to them throughout the winter.

While the land on these plants is heavily stocked with poultry, the birds are on it only half of the season,--when vegetation grows freely,--and during the remainder of the season a great deal of manure is removed from the soil by gross-feeding crops like rye and cabbage. So the land may be heavily stocked longer than it could be if fowls were on it all the time. The chickens grown in this way do not usually grow so large as those that are given more room, but they are grown at less cost and are as large as the market demands. By this method the land will carry a large crop of chickens year after year for many years, yet it finally becomes so contaminated that chickens do not thrive on it.

INTENSIVE EGG FARMING

Still another important development due to artificial incubation took place in California. The climate of the Pacific Coast is well suited to fowls of the Mediterranean class, the cold never being severe enough to affect their large combs. Hence these fowls early became very popular with farmers in this section, but as they were non-sitters, those who kept them had to keep hens of another breed to hatch and rear the chickens. When an incubator factory was established at Petaluma, California, the farmers in that vicinity began to use incubators, and some small egg farms grew up in the town. White Leghorns were kept almost exclusively. Before long the egg industry here had grown to such proportions that it was the most important local industry, and the district became celebrated as a center of egg production. Although the product is different, and a different type of fowl is used, the conditions at Petaluma closely resemble those in the roaster-growing district of Massachusetts. The special egg farms are small, each containing from five to ten acres. The houses for the laying hens are larger than the colony houses used in Rhode Island, and are arranged in groups of three, each group containing about five hundred hens.

The egg farmers grow their own pullets but, as a rule, do not breed or hatch them. The hatching is done by custom hatcheries, the eggs coming from flocks of White Leghorns on farms that do not specialize in poultry but keep a flock of Leghorns under more favorable conditions than exist on the egg farms. Here, as in the Massachusetts district, the bad effects of intensive methods are reduced for a time, because the fowls affected by them are not used for reproduction.

POULTRY FANCIERS' FARMS

A large proportion of poultry fanciers are city people who have very little room for their fowls. Some have no room at all for growing chickens, although, by giving them the best of care, they can keep a small flock of adult birds in fair condition. Such fanciers have to find farmers to grow chickens for them. This is not so easy as is commonly supposed, for the farmers who are sufficiently interested in poultry to give them the care required to make good exhibition birds usually want to give their own birds all the time they can spare for work with poultry.

So it happens that, after a few years' experience in keeping fine fowls in close quarters, an amateur fancier almost always wants to move to a farm where he can grow more and better chickens. A small farm near a city suits the average fancier best, because, when so situated, he can continue his regular work and look after his poultry in leisure time. Fanciers generally use houses with many pens under one roof, because, even when they have only one variety, the different matings must be kept separate during the breeding season, the adult males must be kept separate at all times, and valuable hens cannot be kept in large flocks except when damage to plumage may be remedied before they are to be exhibited or sold. A fancier will keep only five or six birds, and sometimes only two or three, where a utility poultry keeper would keep a dozen. If the yards connecting with the pens in the houses are small, he will arrange so that each lot of fowls may have access to a large yard daily or on alternate days. In every way practicable the experienced fancier arranges to give his fowls all the advantages of natural conditions, while isolating them as completely as is necessary to keep each individual in perfect condition.

Poultry farms that were started as intensive market-poultry or egg farms are sometimes converted into fancy-poultry farms. This is very likely to be the case if thoroughbred stock is used and the owner becomes skillful as a breeder. If he can breed fowls of a quality to command high prices, he may be able to produce enough of them on a small farm to make a very good living, when it would be very much harder, or perhaps impossible, to make the farm profitable with ordinary stock.

While farmers usually care more for horses, cattle, sheep, and hogs, many become interested in poultry, and if they are natural fanciers and good business men, it often happens that the growing of fancy poultry becomes one of the most important industries on the farm. Many women on farms become interested in fancy poultry, and some become very skillful breeders and exhibitors. A farmer-fancier's poultry plant is usually a combination of extensive and intensive methods. Some buildings with small compartments must be provided, but all except the choicest birds can be managed just like the ordinary fowls on a farm where arrangements are made with a view to giving them the full advantage of the good conditions which the place affords.

To a novice in fancy-poultry culture the number of chickens grown by expert fanciers seems very small for the equipment and the land used, but the old fancier has learned in the costly school of competition, by the bitter experience of defeat, that in growing exhibition poultry it pays to give the birds a great deal more room, both indoors and outdoors, than is needed simply to get quick growth and good size. Elegance of form, depth and brilliance of color, and the indefinable qualities of style and finish that distinguish the high-class exhibition fowl are obtained in a much larger proportion of birds when they are given a great deal more room than they apparently need.