Ghe Western
Poultry Guide

Practical Greatise
— on Western=——=
Poultry Culture

Sy
Price Gwelve
Practical

$ 1.00 Poultrymen

FOR
POULTRY MEN AND POULTRY WOMEN
OF THE GREAT WEST

THE

Western Poultry Guide

BY

Twelve Successful Western
Poultrymen

PRICE $1.00

EDITED BY
SC WILEEEAMS
EDITOR
NORTHWEST POULTRY JOURNAL
(OLDEST, LARGEST, BEST IN THE WEST)
SALEM, OREGON

C. F. WILLIAMS

Editor and Manager
Northwest Poultry; Journal
eSALEM, OREGON

roe
ey

6c1.4382960

done

PREFACE

HE only apology we have to offer in submitting
A i this poultry book to the reading public, is that

we could not publish a more extensive and
complete work and supply one that covers every
phase of the poultry industry. To do this would
require a book many times the size of this and even
then some facts would be omitted. Nearly every
man you meet, who is in the poultry business, has
an idea of his own, as to how a man should proceed
to accomplish certain results. There are so many
ideas that any attempt to tell the “all” of how to
buy, mate, incubate, breed, cull, house, feed, and
market poultry would fail to meet the entire approval
of all poultry critics.

In preparing the following chapters, it has been
the constant desire of our writers to make the
chapters full of common-sense statements and as
complete in detail as possible and yet not produce a
book that is tiresome to read and understand.

There are many theoretical books on the market,
which tell in their way how to realize a success in
the poultry business. There is quite a difference
between theory and practice. Someone has correctly
stated: “You do not know that you can do a thing
until you have actually done it.”’ For this reason, we
have divided this book into chapters, taking up the
most important subjects connected with poultry.
Each subject was assigned to a man who has actually
made a success and can write from experience. Such
advice is the only advice that is worth heeding. When
assigning the subjects, we emphatically requested
that only conservative statements be given.

The last thougnt we desire to leave with you is
this: If you are now making a success in the poultry
business, do not be too anxious to try out new ideas.

C. F. WILLIAMS, Editor.

Published by
Northwest Poultry Journal Publishing Co.

CHAPTER I

IN THE BEGINNING

By CHARLES MCALISTER, Seattle, Washingt<:.

idea that poultry
culture is a simple
matter, an occupa-
tion that requires
no particular preparation, and
one that affords much pleasure
and profit with very little
work, care and attention. It
will be our earnest endeavor to
dispel this idea of the poultry
business, in this chapter, by
presenting the facts with rela-
tion to poultry culture, as they
are and as they exist today,
that the beginner who may
perchance read the pages of
this book, may not be misled
by what he may read, but on
the contrary, when he shalt
have absorbed what is herein
written, he may have a more
correct idea of what poultry
culture really is; a more extended conception of what is required to
equip him with the knowledge and experience that is so essential to
iusure final success.

Charles McAlister

A general knowledge of the fundamental principles of poultry
culture may be acquired by study of the methods of others, and by
reading treatise upon the subject. Experience cannot be so acquired,
and only comes by a gradual mastery of the art of poultry culture by
careful and studious application as we go along.

There are two elements that enter largely into the successful
culture of poultry. An aptitude for the occupation. In other words,
a love for the feathered tribe. Especial training, that can be acquired
only by association with the business in a manner that its smallest

6 The Western Poultry Guide

detail is observed and understood. The first can never be acquired,
and without the first, the second becomes a task that is difficult to
master.

These facts are already so well known, and have so often been
the subject of articles in the poultry press of the country, that it
seems almost superfluous to mention them, but it is for the reason
that they are so continually disregarded, put aside or disbelieved,
that it becomes imperative as an introduction to this chapter to call
attention to the uselessness of, without some practical knowledge of
the business, trying to do that for which they are thus unfitted,
regardless of, and utterly neglecting the ever-increasing warning
daily given by the many absolute failures in the business.

As all knowledge is gained by observation, reflection and experi-
ence, and as a knowledge of the business is absolutely necessary, it is
suggested that a person desiring to take up practical poultry culture,
should commence in a modest manner, with a few birds at the first,
and as experience is gained, to gradually add to the stock if it is
found to be a paying investment. In other words, go slow. Be
willing to start from the ground and gradually work up. Mind this,
the man who starts at the top, generally, if not always, strikes the
ground with a dull and sickening thud. The keynote to success is
taking up the business in a small way, mastering its first principles
and then branching out gradually as one’s experience broadens and
the demands seem to indicate.

It has been demonstrated time and again, that no amount of
capital invested in modern equipment, together with the best stock to
be obtained, will make a success of poultry culture. Various things
besides inclination and capital must be considered; and not a person,
unless they have tried it, can possibly imagine or conceive how many
difficulties there are to overcome, and how much knowledge there is

to acquire, and numberless things to learn, before one can hope even
for moderate success.

Conditions contribute largely, too, in the degree of success that
is met in poultry culture. By this we mean location, climatic condi-
tions, character of the soil, and general surroundings. It is always
desirable to have the soil of a character that will drain readily, with
a slope that will permit of facing the buildings toward the south or
east, that they may receive all the benefit possible from the sunshine.
Shade also is a very necessary requirement, and if not natural upon
the ground used, then trees should be planted to furnish it.

Any variety of fruit trees are good, but preferably cherries or
plum, as they grow rapidly. Plum is especially suitable, and it is
claimed that poultry keep down the ravages of the curculio. If the
yards are extensive, fruit trees in variety should be the rule.

In this coast country, buildings are not of so great importance as
in colder climates. Any building that is without draughts, no matter

The Western Poultry Guide {i

how cheaply constructed, will answer, but they must be well ventilated,
well lighted and roomy. We have always advocated scratching shed
houses of some character, and we believe them to be very desirable
in the Pacific Northwest, where there is so much rain during the
winter months. The houses should be constructed in a manner that
they may be readily cleaned and fumigated as a preventative against
vermin of every character. Especially should the perches, nest-boxes
and dropping board be portable, that they may be thoroughly cleansed
when desired. The runs should be made to conform to-the space to
be occupied, and the fences are much more satisfactory if the base is
made of two one-foot boards, thus preventing the males of the different
pens fighting. With the Asiatic varieties a fence four feet in height
is sufficient, but with the Mediteranean varieties a higher fence is
preferable. All feed and water receptacles should be of such a
character as to be easily cleaned and kept in a sanitary condition, for
fresh water and good clean food is half the battle won. Perches
should be about two inches in width and rounded on top. We do not
believe in flat perches. Nests should be large enough to be com-
fortable, and sufficient number in each compartment so that there
will be no danger of the birds fighting for nest room.

Which is the best breed, is a question that has never been decided,
and in the selection of a breed or variety, the beginner should be
governed entirely by his taste or fancy. What pleases one does not
appeal to another, and so it resolves itself into a matter of choice, in
which the individual must be the sole judge.

After selection of the breed or variety has been settled, however,
procure the best that your means will permit. If you have not the
means to purchase a pen of high-class birds, of well established
ancestry, then purchase a trio and work up from that. The natural
tendency of the species is to retrograde in breeding, and the idea that
so many beginners seem to have, that they can begin with cheap
stock and gradually improve it, is a delusion that has sent many,
many poultry raisers upon the rocks of failure. It is a fatal error
in poultry culture, and one that has been the cause of more failures
than any other one thing. Just remember, the best is none too good,
and govern yourself accordingly.

Now that we have outlined what is really necessary for the
beginner to understand as he approaches the study of poultry culture
from a practical standpoint, we may perhaps be permitted to offer a
few words of caution and advice, based upon the experience gained
by the hard school of actual work and practice. We do not wish to
discourage any one from entering this pleasant field of employment,
or make those who may have already taken up the vocation, imagine
they have a more difficult task than it really is, but we would not have
anyone imagine that the field of poultry culture offers a simple and
easy manner of making a livelihood, which one may take up and thereby

§ The Western Poultry Guide

avoid the tiresome duties that are a portion of every line of business,
voeation or profession. To make a success of it, requires the same close
application and attention that any other business requires, and as we
have advised, the keynote of success is in commencing in a small way
and gradually branching out and enlarging as the circumstances may
demand and require. Nearly all of the successful poultry breeders
of today have grown from a small beginning, and gradually advanced
to the prominence they occupy today, and could we know the story of
their success, it would tell us of many a hard struggle during their
early years in poultry culture. Many a time they have been discour-
aged in their efforts to solve the problems that came to them, and to
overcome the obstacles that presented themselves from time to time,
but they have put them all aside, and today stand upon the summit
of success. We see the venture at the crowning point of its success,
but we do not understand what it has taken to bring it to this very
attractive and alluring position, and we are apt to become over-
enthusiastic and imagine the field of poultry culture is an easy and
charming occupation. We cannot conceive the time, the energy, the
study, the work, that it has taken to arrive at such a state of
proficiency in poultry culture, nor can we understand that the way
has been a series of disappointments and much discouragement. We
read the glowing accounts of these great poultry plants and of the
returns they are bringing to their owners, and it looks so simple and
easy that we become dissatisfied with our own occupation, for when
the “hen fever’ comes it generally comes with a vengeance, and for
a time all other considerations are subordinated to it. When we are
under the spell we are apt to figure a little too, and those figures are
so alluring, and figures don’t lie, and the proposition works out so
nicely and so advantageously, that in our mind we imagine our
fortune as good as made. We never think of failure, and our mind
seems unable to grasp the idea that perhaps it might not be so great
a success as we have anticipated, this chicken business, for our
enthusiasm has caused us to see ourselves in possession of a great
poultry plant, with long lines of brooder houses, properly heated, with
automatic devices that are working to perfection, with our incubator
cellars equipped with up-to-date machines, hatching chicks by the
hundreds, and the demand for our product in broilers greater than
the supply. We can see these new hatched chicks start at one end
of our brooder house, and in ten weeks come out the other end, and
the dollars rolling into our bank account.

It is an alluring picture, and it is not strange that people lose
their heads over it, and allow their imagination to get the better of
their judgment. The picture is drawn for a purpose, and that is to
warn the enthusiastic person, with a bad case of “hen fever,” that as
a rule he entirely overlooks the distance between the start, and the
plant that he has allowed his imagination to anticipate, for in the
interval there are years of toil and study and care and attention, that

The Western Poultry Guide 9

has gone to make the success of the poultryman who stands at the top..

Many a man, under the charm of a desire to be where the experi-
enced poultryman stands, but without his knowledge and experience,
has gone into the poultry business only to make a failure, give up in
disgust, condemn the vocation as a snare and delusion, and thereby
keep some other person from entering the field who is endowed with
qualities that would make a success of it. On the other hand, if they
had started in a modest manner, and by study, care and application,
learned the business, the result might have been very different.

So in conclusion, we again say to any person contemplating entering
the field of poultry culture, go slow. Be as enthusiastic as you please,
but be patient and careful. Give close attention to detail, and study
the business as you would any other business proposition, for in the
poultry business, like every other business or vocation, you will get
out of it just what you put into it, and if you are adapted to it, and
are patient and careful, and are willing to commence at the bottom,.
and to learn the business as you go along, sooner or later success will
crown your efforts.

10 The Western Poultry Guide

CHAPTER II

COMPARISON OF THE BREEDS AND VARIETIES

By G. W. GREBE, Boise, Idaho, Veteran Poultry Breeder and
Manufacturer of Incubators and Brooders.

HERE is a best breed or variety for
each man and for each location and
climate. The question, “Which is the
best breed?” is generally always an-
swered in a way that would lead the

beginner to believe that all varieties were alike

and it simply remained to put the right care
and feed before them to make them all do
equally well.

This is not true. The different breeds and
varieties are as different in habits and tem-
perament as they are in color and form.

Some markets pay more for large, well-
fattened table fowls than they do for eggs. Some markets pay the
better price for two-pound fries. Some climates are more suitable to
light, active fowls and some climates are more adapted to the heavy
varieties.

Every breed and every variety has its proper place, and while
some poultrymen will make a success with any variety, still they will
always make a greater success with the particular variety that is
adapted to that particular location.

Every successful poultryman, whether he breeds one or a dozen
varieties, has his favorite, and that favorite is generally the one that
brings him the greatest cash return on the amount of feed and labor
invested.

In making a strict comparison of the breeds a writer is always
at a great disadvantage owing to the fact that he is writing to and
for those who breed all varieties and he cannot generally give the
weak points of certain breeds in certain locations without treading
heavily on some breeder’s toes. Each breed has a weak point as well
as many good ones, and in order to be fair with all and give full
value of information to the beginner these weak points should be
fearlessly mentioned.

The space and time forbids taking up all the varieties in the
American Standard. Furthermore, the writer in this instance has not
handled quite all of them. Consequently we can only take up those

G. W. Grebe

The Western Poultry Guide att

most popular breeds and those with which the writer is most familiar.
However, the comparison will give a good idea of what to look for
in selecting a variety and how to get the right breed for the right place.

THE IDEAL FOWL.

The ideal bird would be one that could be depended on to—
Lay in winter.

2. Lay in the fall, summer, and spring.

3. Lay eggs that would hatch in all seasons.
4. Grow rapidly to the two-pound weight.
5. Mature early.
6

7

8

Se

Fatten easily.
Dress and finish with small amount of waste.
Weigh heavy when fattened and dressed.

9. Be hardy; live and thrive well as chick and fowl.

10. Range, hustle, forage for its own if necessary.

11. Be gentle and easily handled.

12. Have beauty of shape and color.

13. Stand confinement without loss of vigor.

14. Cause the attendant a minimum amount of labor.

If there were such a bird as I have outlined there would be no
mecessity of comparing breeds. Everyone would have that one ideal
kind of fowl and the others would be out of existence.

But it is entirely out of harmony with nature to produce such an
animal, insect or bird or plant.

Man is not perfect and those things which man calls ideal may not
be ideal for the animal, bird or plant, and consequently we can never
‘hope to produce the ideal bird that will conform to all our requirements
exactly as we would like in all climates and under all conditions.

We can strive to attain perfection and by using good judgment
attain a very high degree toward it. Some of the breeds we now
have will, if placed in the proper environment and given ideal care
and attention, come so near to perfection in all points that man should
not ask for anything better.

BREED CHARACTERISTICS.

We will now take up the strong and weak points of the different
breeds and varieties, always bearing in mind that those things which
are called weak points in some climates are the strongest ones in
-other climates.

Many people have the idea that the most profitable bird is the one
that lays in the winter when eggs are high. This is not always the
‘case. The profits must be figured on the year, or on several years,
and many times the summer layer will bring the highest cash return
‘in a year. Price of eggs and the market conditions must be studied
in order to determine which breed or variety is best.

2 The Western Poultry Guide

Those breeds that lay heavily in winter, always lay less in spring
and summer and the winter laying bird sometimes produces eggs the
following spring that are weak in fertility and do not hatch a large
percentage of strong chicks.

The breed that fattens easily will be more apt to put on a certain
amount of fat in the winter, which keeps the body warm and helps to:
fill the egg basket. On the other hand the fat bird will not lay at
all when the weather turns warm.

White Leghorns—(Conclusions drawn from eleven years of breed-
ing in writer’s own yards. Experiments with seven different strains.
Reports from 104 breeders in the Northwest. Writer’s experiments
made in Nebraska and Idaho) —Extra good spring and summer layers.
Poor winter layers unless the climate is mild or unless housed warm.
wair fall layers. Extra good hatches may be expected from the eggs.
Grow fairly rapid to the fry size. Mature early. Fatten poorly.
Dress and finish poor. Weigh poor. Hardiness and livability of
chicks extra good. Range and forage extra good. Not very gentle.
Stand confinement fairly well.

This variety is very active and is not heavily feathered. This is.
ideal for warm climates, as they seldom get too fat and are active
enough to keep the blood circulating when the weather is not too cold.
In extremely cold weather they are not likely to turn out a yield of
eggs, but the large hatches the following spring, and the hardiness
of the chicks will make up for the lack of eggs in the winter. They
are rather wild and hard to handle but this wildness and activity
has its use and for those who have large range where they can make
use of their foraging ability will gain by the wildness which to others
is a weak point. They make poor roaster fowls and the market that
pays well for frys and broilers is better for the White Leghorn than
where roasters or heavy table fowls are desired, because all young
cockerels in this variety should be disposed of at less than two and
one-half pound weight. After six months the cockerels are almost
unfit to eat. The hens should be carried over through the second year
of laying, because they do not bring much on the market when killed
and so we must get as many eggs as possible out of the bird before it is
sold. The White Leghorn is easy on the attendant, as they can be
housed in large numbers and seldom have to be broken up from setting.

Brown Leghorns—(Conclusions drawn from three years in writer’s
own yards. Two strains. Reports from twenty-eight Western breed-
ers. Writer’s experience in Nebraska and Idaho)—-Same as White.

Buff Leghorns—(Conclusions drawn from ten years in writer’s
own yards. Eight strains. Reports from forty-two Western breeders.
Experience mostly in Idaho)—As winter layers, good. As summer
and fall layers, fair. As spring layers, fair. The eggs hatch only
fair, and sometimes poor unless extra attention is given to the breeding
stock. They grow to the fry size rapidly and mature early. Fatten

The Western Poultry Guide 13

fairly well and dress fairly good. for table use, but do not weigh over
four pounds on the average. The chicks and mature birds are hardy.
Range and foragers, good. Not very gentle but more so than the
other Leghorns. Stand confinement fairly well. Can be housed in
large numbers, but will cause the attendant some trouble in breaking
up setters during the summer.

This variety of Leghorns is a trifle larger and more heavily
feathered than any of the others. They are also somewhat less active
and will fatten better. This, of. course, makes them better as winter
layers and poorer as summer layers, but better as table fowls. They
have a tendency to set more than any other Leghorn, and coops for
breaking up the broody hens should be in convenient places, so the
attendant does not have to carry them a great distance to and from
the houses.

The Buff Leghorn comes near being in the all-purpose class, but
great care must be taken of the breeding stock to make the eggs
hatchable. The birds from which hatching eggs are to be taken in
the spring should not be allowed to lay too heavily during the winter
end should be kept active and scratching all the time. Green grass in
abundance should be given the breeders and when grass cannot be
obtained they should have clover or alfalfa hay leaves in addition to
beets, mangels or sprouted oats.

White Wyandottes—(Conclusions from eight years in writer’s
yards. Four strains. Reports from ninety-two Western breeders.
Experiments in Idaho)—-As winter layers they are good. As spring
Jayers, fair. Summer and fall layers, fair. Eggs hatch very poorly
but can be made to hatch fairly well by giving careful attention to the
breeders. Grow to the fry size rapidly and make extra good broilers.
Mature fairly early. Fatten easily. Dress and finish for table use
good. Average weight, fairly good. Hardiness fair. As foragers
fair. Gentle and easily handled. Stand confinement well. Cannot be
housed in very large numbers and must be broken from setting quite
often during the spring and summer.

The White Wyandotte makes the ideal bird for a quick broiler and
is of a neat size and shape for table use. They also make very good
winter layers, but the eggs are the most difficult to hatch of any
variety in the writer’s experience. The eggs do not run as uniform in
size and shape and color and this of course makes some difference in
the heat applied to the eggs. To obtain fairly good results in hatching
the eggs from this variety one should follow the directions for feeding
breeders given in the article above on Buff Leghorns. Also one should
select only those eggs that are smooth of shell and even in size.

Buff Wyandottes—(Conclusions from eight years in writer’s own
yards. Three strains. Reports from five Western breeders. Experi-
ments in Idaho)—Almost the same as White, except that the eggs are
a little heavier shelled and harder to hatch. They are also a little

14 The Western Poultry Guide

better as winter layers and poorer as summer layers, owing to a
neavier feathering in most strains which carry the Cochin cross.

Barred Plymouth Rocks—(Conclusions from five years in writer’s
yards. Four different strains. Reports from fifty-five Western
breeders. Experiments in Nebraska and Idaho)—As winter layers,
fair. Spring and summer layers, good. Fall layers, poor. The eggs
hatch fairly well. Growth and maturity is fairly good but not quite
as rapid as the Wyandotte. Extra good as table fowls. Weight is
good. Chicks and mature birds hardy. As foragers, fair. Gentle
and easily handled. Stand confinement well. Cannot be housed in
very large numbers and are inclined to set quite often in the summer.

This variety is a good all-purpose fowl, but the young stock must
be watched carefully and forced to maturity or they are apt to pass
ever the winter and not begin laying until the following spring. A
bran-mash every day, with plenty of grass range, wheat and oats,
shade and plenty of fresh water are the essentials for young Barred
Rocks. ;

White Plymouth Rocks—(Conclusions from eight years in writer’s
yards. Three strains. Reports from ten Western breeders. Experi-
ments in Idaho)—-Same as Barred.

Rhode Island Reds—(Conclusions from two years in writer’s yards.
Two strains. Reports from ninety-five Western breeders. Experi-
ments in Idaho)—As winter layers good. Summer layers fair. Fall
layers poor. Eggs hatch fairly well but breeders must be given extra
care or the fertility and strength of germs will be poor. Growth to
fry size fair. Early maturity fair. Fatten easily. Dress a nice
yellow table fowl and weigh fairly well. Chicks and mature birds are
hardy. As foragers fair. Gentle and easily handled. Stand confine-
ment well. Inclined to be very broody in the spring and will cause
the attendant much work..

This variety, like the Rock and Wyandotte, is a good all-purpose
fowl, but the eggs are rather difficult to hatch and the breeders
must be allowed to rest during the winter in order to get good hatches
from them the following spring.

Light Brahmas—(Conclusions from three years of breeding. Three
strains. Reports from eight Western breeders. Experiments in
Nebraska)—As winter layers, good. Spring layers, fair. Summer
and fall layers, poor. The eggs are rather hard to hatch, owing to
the thickness of the shell and the tendency to inactivity on the part
of the fowls. Growth and maturity is slow. Fatten very easily.
Dress the largest and heaviest as table fowls. Chicks and mature
birds are hardy. Not good foragers. Very gentle. Stand confine-
ment in a three-foot fence. Cannot be housed in large numbers and
are inclined to set quite often in the spring and summer.

This breed is an ideal table bird for roaster purpose. They are
the largest birds in the American Standard and the meat is tender

The Western Poultry Guide 15

and juicy even in the old birds, but they are not great egg producers
and do not range far. This breed should be used in place of turkeys
where one has limited quarers and cannot allow turkeys to range.
Vhe turkey would not stand close confinement, while the Brahma could
be kept in small pens and would dress as large and bring about as
much on the Thanksgiving market as the turkey. The Brahma does
not grow as rapidly as the turkey and therefore should be hatched as
early as possible in the months of January, February and March, so
as to attain the size desired before the holidays. The breeders in this
variety should have the same attention regarding rest in winter and
the proper feed, etc., so as to produce better hatches in the spring. The
eggs should have a trifle higher heat and a little more moisture during
the incubating period.

Buff Orpingtons—(Conclusions from three years’ breeding. Four
strains. Reports from thirty-five Western breeders. Experiments in
Ydaho)—As winter layers, good. Spring layers, fair. Summer layers,
fair. Fall layers, fair. Eggs hatch extra good. Growth and ma-
turity rapid. Fatten easily. Make good large table fowls. Chicks
and mature birds hardy. As foragers, fair but must not be allowed
to get too fat and lazy. Gentle and easily handled. Stand confine-
ment well. Cannot be housed in very large numbers and cause the
attendants considerable work in the spring on account of broodiness.

The Buff Orpington lays very evenly through the four seasons of
the year. They do not lay heavily in the spring. In fact, the yield
from this variety is about the same in winter and fall as it is in the
‘ spring. They are the only heavy variety that has come under the
writer’s observation that will lay a large percentage of hatchable eggs
for incubation. But they must be broken from setting continuously
during the spring and summer in order to obtain a good yield of eggs.
With this variety one should have broody coops in every house and
the broody hens should be taken from the nests as soon as they show
the least sign of broodiness. The Buff Orpington is also a rather
Leavy eater but will forage over a large area if forced to do so. They
should not be allowed to get fat in hot weather.

Black Minorcas—(Conclusions from two years breeding in writer’s
yards. One strain. Reports from fifteen Western Breeders. Experi-
ments mostly in Idaho)—As winter layers, fair. Spring, summer and
fall layers, good. Eggs hatch poorly unless breeders are given extra
care. Growth to fry size, fair. Mature fairly early. Fatten fairly
well and weigh fairly well for market birds but are rather hard to
dress on account of the black feathers. Mature birds are fairly hardy
but chicks must be given careful attention until nearly mature. Good
rangers and foragers. Fairly gentle. Will stand confinement. Can
be housed in fairly large numbers and cause the attendant very little
trouble with broodiness.

The Black Minorca is a great layer of large eggs and will lay a
fairly large percentage of fertile eggs, but the strength of the germ

16 The Western Poultry Guide

and vitality of the chick can be improved. I would suggest introducing
new blood from a known strain every two years at least and also
giving the breeders a winter rest and plenty of greens and range
where it is possible. Also, do not attempt to breed the Minorca to such
large size until you have the strength and vitality in the strain. In
other words, do not look at size and shape before you have considered
the hardiness and vitality of the birds you place in your breeding pens.

FEED AND CARE.

(Conclusions from twenty years of poultry experimenting and
-observation) .

In the foregoing the writer has given a general idea of the different
breed characteristics. Not on all varieties, but enough of them to give
the beginner a good idea of how to select. We will now mention a few
of those details of feed and care that will help to make the weak
points in a breed stronger and the strong ones still stronger.

Winter Eggs—Hatch the pullets early enough in the spring so they
begin to lay before cold weather. House them warm but give plenty
of fresh air. The egg is formed and layed by circulation of blood. If
you can keep the bird’s body warm and the bird active the blood will
circulate rapidly and you will get eggs. The birds that are to lay the
winter eggs should be fed enough to fatten them a little. The thin,
hungry bird will not keep warm enough to keep the blood in rapid
circulation. If you can get the birds to fatten up and keep active and
scratching at the same time, you will get winter eggs. Plenty of green
feed in the form of alfalfa leaves, mangels, sprouted oats, etc., should
be before the birds every day. Wheat and oats in the morning, one
handful to each bird; bran mash at noon, one pint to five birds; wheat
and corn at night, one handful to each bird. This is a fairly good
standard ration. It can be varied according to market price of grains,
etc., but must never be fed without the addition of plenty of roughage
or green feed as stated above. The oats may form one-third of the
niorning ration and the corn one-third of the evening ration, or we
may use wheat alone for a few days, but always give some variety.
The bran mash may be mixed, eight parts bran to one part meat
meal or bean meal, or where skim milk is obtainable the meat will
not be needed. A small amount of fresh meat or green bone once a
week is permissible, but must be sparingly fed.

Spring and Summer Eggs—Feed the same as for winter eggs but
give more green feed and less grain. Give plenty of cool water, plenty
of shade and see that the birds have a cool place to dust themselves
in the loose soil so as to keep down lice. Spade up the ground on the
shady side of the house, and wherever the birds lay in the heat of
the day.

Fall Eggs—These are often desirable in order to hatch winter
broilers and to hatch fall chickens for the early spring market. Feed

The Western Poultry Guide ily

the same as for winter eggs. Allow the birds to breod for several
weeks during the early spring and feed rather heavily during the early
fall. This will cause a very early molt and those that have been
broody and not laying during the spring will give a good yield in the
fall. Do not allow them to get too fat or the eggs will not be as good
for hatching and they will not lay as many.

Hatchable Eggs—Keep the breeders active. Do not let the male
yet too fat and heavy. Give grass, alfalfa or clover leaves, some form
of meat, if bugs and worms cannot be obtained by the birds, and do
not force them for too many eggs at any one time. Do not allow the
eggs to get cold as ice and stay that way for a long time before setting.
Never set eggs that have been chilled by being in the nests when the
weather is at or below the freezing point. Do not save eggs more than
ten days. Do not set odd shaped, over-sized or under-sized eggs.

Rapid Growth and Early Maturity—Feed the chicks the commercial
chick feed the first three days. Then begin feeding a little bran mash
in addition to the chick feed. Keep them warm but allow plenty of
fresh air all the time in the brooders and brooder houses. Gradually
increase the quantity of chick feed and mash until they go to the
colony houses or coops, then feed the same ration as given for winter
eggs. Do not be afraid of overfeeding chicks. Give them all they can
eat of dry grain and all they will clean up in ten minutes of the mash.
Allow free range on grass. Feed finely chopped grass or sprouts to
the chicks in the brooders after the first day. Give all the green
feed in the form of tender grass or sprouts they will eat. For early
laying, house the pullets in their regular quarters at least a month
before they are expected to lay.

Fattening—Feed plenty of corn and bran mash. Put chopped
greens in the mash. Keep the birds closely confined and darken the
coop so they will roost. Raise curtains and admit light when feeding.
Feed four or five times a day.

CONCLUSION.

Select your breed and variety with the same care and study that
you would use in selecting a farm or home or a business location.

Study the market and place your product on sale at the time it
will bring you the largest return on the investment.

Feed and care for your birds in such a way that they will prciuce
at the time you want the product.

Do not waste anything. Allow the birds to find all the free feed
possible and introduce new blood every year if necessary to keep up
the stamina and vigor of your flock.

18 The Western Poultry Guide

CHAPTER III

COMMERCIAL POULTRY RAISING IN THE
NORTHWEST

By CapTain A. WALDWICK, Tacoma, Washington, Breeder of White
Leghorns, and Manufacturer of Fireless Brooders.

a) O SUCCEED in profitably producing
S| poultry and eggs for the markets,
there are many things which are of
great importance if the poultryman
is to be successful in the highest sense
of the word. The most important are: good
location, low first cost, economy of operation,
good stock, incubation, brooding, inexpensive
but comfortable housing of the birds, proper
feeding, cleanliness and care, convenient to a
good market and shipping point, business abil-
ity, honesty, willingness, and ability for any
kind of work required.

LOCATION.

The best location is on a sandy loam, or Capt. A. Waldwick
gravelly soil where natural drainage is
obtained so there will be no pools of water
standing near the poultry houses. It is also important that this soil
is productive enough to raise green feed for all stock handled, and
the plentiful supply the year around. Without green feed, reai
success is never obtained.

It is of importance to be located near a shipping point so as to save
time in bringing the produce from the farm to the station. It is of
much less importance, if the market is some distance away, than to
have the shipping point several miles away from the farm. The loss
of time in shipping is much more than the extra freight would be on
a long distance shipment. If the best market is nearby, so much
better.

ECONOMY IN CONSTRUCTION AND OPERATION.

The first cost in buildings and equipment should be carefully
uoted. Many failures have resulted from too much money spent in
the construction of too expensive houses and fixtures, also from
impractical methods. Inconvenience in operation has also caused the
downfall of many.

A poultry house may be built very cheaply and at the same time
be comfortable for the birds the year around. A house fourteen by

The Western Poultry Guide 19

fourteen is ample room for fifty layers, and will be most economically
constructed by using the shed roof style. The back should be five:
feet six inches from sill to plate; the front, seven feet 6 inches. This-
will give ample slope to the roof for the water to run off, if paper:
is used. If shingled, the front should be at least two feet higher..
The shed roof style is by far the cheapest and easiest to construct,
and the beginner should look as much to the first cost as to anything
else. It should, however, be borne in mind that cheapness should not
be the only reason for doing anything. Practicability, convenience
in doing the every-day work, coupled with comfort of the birds, winter’
and summer, should be the guides for constructing the poultry house..

A house as formerly described, with open front, about four by’
five feet for every fourteen feet of house front, answers the purpose:
better than anything known at the present time. This open front side:
should face away from the prevailing winds, always. In the Puget:
Sound Country and all along the Pacific Coast, and for some distance:
inland, this wind is from the southeast, to west, and southwest. The
prevailing wind during the rainy and stormy season of the year is
from the southwest. The house, therefore, if facing due east, will
afford protection from the elements on the east side (the open front).
It will be found that even in very stormy weather the house will be
comfortable inside with wire fronts all open.

Interior of Waldwick’s Incubator House—Turning the Eggs.

20 The Western Poultry Guide

Some protection should be provided for the open fronts to be used
at night in very cold and stormy weather. Some use burlap curtains,
ethers muslin. There is considerable difficulty in operating these
curtains, and much time is spent unnecessarily in adjusting them.
The best and most satisfactory way is to have board shutters, two
for each opening, hinged one on each side of the opening. On very
cold nights the two may be closed. On very stormy nights, with a
moderate temperature, one shutter on each opening may be closed if
it is considered best for the health of the birds. With shutters
properly arranged very little time is required in opening and closing.
It can be done about as fast as one can walk past the openings.
This method is inexpensive, durable and the most economical of
operation, of any manner of handling the open front problem that
we know of.

In addition to the board doors at the ends, there should be a door
made from wire netting to admit more ventilation on warm days.

‘Besides facing away from the prevailing winds, there are other
advantages in facing the laying house east. One is that in the winter
‘when we have an occasional cold spell we get the sun’s rays early in
the morning, directly on the entire front, and through the open fronts
directly into the house. An hour or two of sunshine, direct into the
house on a,cold morning, does an immense amount of good, as it is
generally the coldest of the twenty-four hours. It warms up the
interior of the house, makes the birds sing, and they enjoy basking
in the sunshine and dusting in the fresh, clean earth—if an earth
floor—and there should never be any other kind in a poultry house,
but it should be filled in or raised at least six inches above the outside
ground, so as to make it dry at all seasons of the year. Houses with
earth floors have been found by experiment stations to be warmer
and more practical than board or cement floors.

GOOD STOCK.

Good stock is as important as its housing. It is not necessary
for the market egg producer to start with premium winners at the
shows. What is needed is strong, hardy birds that have been selected
for their egg-laying qualities, rather than their markings as fancy
birds, for on their ability to produce eggs, depends mainly the success
or failure of their owner. He must have birds that have been well
hatched and raised, otherwise they will not possess the vigor and
vitality necessary for heavy egg production, no difference if the parent
stock is of the very best producers.

FEEDING.

Proper and systematic feeding should always be practiced for
growing stock, layers and those to be sent to market. No “slip shod”
methods will do. For the layers and growing stock after they are
about a month old, a dry mash may be kept before them in hoppers

The Western Poultry Guide 21

all the time, also beef scraps and protein meal equal parts,—also
shells. Grain may be fed only once each day, in the evening before
gathering the eggs, but in that case a moist mash should be fed in
the morning. Feed a variety for all stock. To produce eggs in large
cuantities in winter, feed in deep litter three times a day. Feed oats
steeped at least twenty-four hours. It is a great egg producer, and

Incubation has been somewhat difficult until late years. There

Interior of Waldwick’s Incubator House—Testing Out the Eggs.

if prices are running high gives as good returns for the money as
costlier grains.

INCUBATION.
are now many excellent incubators on the market. The beginner will
do best by following strictly the directions of the different makes.

Heat, ventilation and moisture properly balanced are the essentials

for a good hatch, and when those are properly adjusted, good hatches
will always be the result.

BROODING.

The most difficult part of the poultry raising business—for some
people—seems to be the brooding or raising the chicks. If space
would permit I could write a very long chapter on this subject alone.
T will merely say that the best and largest percentage of good strong

Z2 The Western Poultry Guide

chicks is raised the most economically both for fuel, time and labor,
in lampless, or fireless brooders, in a house heated to anywhere from
50 to 70 degrees during the day. The cheapest kind of wood obtainable
may be used. It eliminates the cost of oil and attending to oil lamps.
it allows the poultry raiser to retire for the night and secure a sound
rest after a long day’s work. He need have no fear of fire, as there
need be none at night. It enables him to weed out all weak chicks
as they are brooded in lots of 100 or less, and this advantage alone
is of great importance, for on chicks, while small, depends the future
money-maker as a breeder. When broodjng chicks in flocks of 1,000
to 1500 (room brooding method) this weeding out of the weaker ones
is an impossibility, as the space is too large, which makes it difficult
to observe the individual bird.

I have brooded chicks in fireless brooders exclusively for the last
five years, and am thoroughly convinced from what I have noted this
year that there is no method equal to it in any way whatever. Great
claims have been made for other methods, but unfortunately for those
who have tried them, they have come very far below expectations.

The individual lamp brooder is the thing for those raising a few
chicks, for those raising chicks in large numbers, the indoor lampless
will prove the best and most economical.

With proper arrangement of brooders, one person can comfortably
take care of 5,000 chicks. Half this number would be about the limit
with any other method of brooding.

CLEANLINESS.

Cleanliness should always be observed. There has never been any-
thing that has done more to put the otherwise successful poultry
raiser out of business than neglect in keeping houses, goods and
premises clean. An ever watchful eye for vermin is needed, and even
if none are seen, spray and clean regularly just the same—remember
‘the value of prevention.

RELIABILITY.

‘

It is necessary to be convenient to a good market so one can call
occasionally on the customer and thus become better acquainted, and
if good goods have been shipped, the top prices may always be
obtained. By coming in contact with the customer, the shipper will,
if practicing the “square deal,’ produce that confidence and feeling
of reliability so desirable between buyer and seller. It also gives the
shipper a chance to learn if he is getting a “square deal.’”’ If he is not,
he should drop the customer. There are always others to be found.
When a reliable customer is found, do your utmost to give satisfaction,
without giving anything away, for eggs of the best grade always
command the top prices, and the honest shipper has no difficulty in
ebtaining them.

The Western Poultry Guide 23

Waldwick and His Auto Delivery.

WHO SHOULD ENGAGE IN THE BUSINESS.

It used to be that poultry raising was looked upon as only fit for
the “wimmen” folks, or as an occupation for some old decrepit person
and even invalids, also regarded as something that any one could make
a success at, even if he had failed at everything else he had tried. I
want to tell you most emphatically that never was anything more
incorrect. To succeed, there must be first a willingness to work;
second, ability for business, as well as for any kind of work that
comes along, from digging a ditch to running an incubator. Personal
manual labor is not absolutely necessary to be done if the owner has
the means and feels inclined to hire the work done. Neither is it
necessary to do any work, if he has plenty of money and has the
experience. In that case the experience will be worth much more
than the labor hired. But for. the beginner, with small means, and
perhaps less experience, I will say, be prepared to do the work
yourself, until you have gained sufficient knowledge of the business
to know when you are right or wrong. When you know you are
right and have the means, then go ahead and let nothing stop you.
Push ahead to the limit and you will in time be reaping a continual
harvest. The beginner will do best by adopting the methods of some

24 The Western Poultry Guide

one who has made a success and follow them step by step as he goes
along, or he may adopt a combination of several successful men’s
methods, but usually that does not work as well as sticking closely to
one man’s ideas. Much time, money, and worry may be saved by
so doing.

DOES IT PAY?

Some prospective poultry raisers seem more interested in “what
are the profits” rather than the expense. I will here give a short
outline of both.

Land, houses, stock and equipment for an egg farm will be about
$3 per hen. This will vary according to the price of the land, also
the number of hens kept, for the larger the number of birds, the less
will be the average cost per fowl.

Feed for a layer per year, $1.50; 12 dozen eggs at an average of
30 cents, $3.60; balance for labor, interest, etc., $2.10.

The above is a low average for the number of eggs laid if good
stock is kept, also a low average price on eggs, especially if one
manages to get many winter eggs, which is not difficult with proper
housing, feed and care. It has been my experience to take in more
money for market eggs during the winter than in the spring and
summer. My eggs have averaged from 36 cents to 41 cents per
dozen for the last six years. Fai Tecate pnostson

Will the poultry business be overdone? Not so long as the ere
of this country continue to eat eggs. I remember about two years
ago I read in an Eastern farm journal, that the way large poultry
farms were starting up in certain sections of the country, there would
in a few years be so many chickens that one could not sell either
chickens or eggs. How that prophesy has worked out we all know.
It is a sure thing. The poultry business is at a higher standard than
ever before, and I predict that it will continue to grow. Of course
there are, and always will be, those who never can make it pay. To
the intelligent, painstaking person, who practices common-sense
methods, who is willing to give as much time and attention to the
management and care of his poultry as he would necessarily be com-
pelled to do to any other business he may be engaged in, will find
that for the same amount of money, the same energy, time and labor
spent, he will receive larger returns, and be more independent than
he would in any other business or line of endeavor. To reach this
point, however, there must be time for learning how, and knowing
how, permitting of no leaks, no escaped steam, in short, no waste.

The Pacific Northwest offers exceptionally good opportunities
for the egg farmer. Building material is the cheapest here of any
place on the coast. Feed is as low as elsewhere, but the most im-
portant fact lies in the markets, for they are the best of any part of
the country.

The Western Poultry Guide 25

CHAPTER IV

PROGRESSIVE POULTRY CULTURE—SOMETHING
ABOUT POULTRY HOUSES AND FEEDING

By J. H. Davis, Dinuba, California, Thirty Years a Poultryman
and Writer.

HE world moves apace.
The fashions of today
: are the follies of to-
Wrs)| Morrow. It is not far
to tallow candles and
stage coaches. Not so far back.
Today the tallow candles are
superseded by kerosene, gas and
electricity. The stage coaches
of yesterday are superseded by
the palace cars of the present.

We travel fast. Fifty years
ago poultry culture scarcely had
a name. Then came the new
breeds of fowls from over the
seas and Americans began mak- J. H. Davis
ing new breeds themselves, and
with the advent of the breeds of fancy feathers have come all sorts of
poultry appliances and inventions, including incubators, brooders and
se on, until now, we have the big hatcheries which turn out day-old
chicks “while you wait.” I could go on and write chapters on the
beginning, progress and present of poultry culture, but as this book
is an educational one, I shall waste no time in “glittering generalities,”
but begin at once on the task assigned me.

Poultry house construction depends much on climate, but I am an
advocate of the open front house for any climate. In the North
where the winters are cold, a heavy curtain can be let down over the
open front when occasion requires. In climates like California, and
much of Oregon, Western Washington, and in all the Southern States,
the entire open front is the thing, and curtains will only be required
in some sections where heavy wind storms with rain are periodical
annoyances.

The poultry house should be built as plain as possible, even with
people having plenty of money, there is no use for elaborate displays
of cornices, windows and other ornaments which cost money, do no
good and which harbor insects. In building a house or houses, the

26 The Western Poultry Guide

builder must decide on the size he needs. I can’t do that for him, but
T can give him some pointers.

The average poultry house should be twelve feet deep, six feet
high in front and five feet at the rear. It should have a shed roof,
because it is cheaper than shingles, yet the shingle roof may be put
on by those who prefer it. The roof should be absolutely unleakable
and the back of the house and three sides should be tight. Thus, while
the house is filled with fresh air all the time, there can be no
draughts. A fowl in the tree is not exposed to draughts, but a fowl
in a house where there are holes and cracks is exposed to draughts.
If you raise your window a few inches and allow the wind to blow on
you from a door and through the window, you will likely wake up
in the morning with a sore throat and a catarrhal affection of the
head. Just so with fowls—those exposed to draughts get a cold in
the head, then catarrh, and then roup—after which, the bone yard.

The chicken house should have as few contraptions inside as
possible, and everything therein should be movable. The roosts should
be laid on trestles so that these can be taken out in the yard, painted
over with kerosene and set on fire, when all insect life will be
destroyed as well as the eggs. Nest boxes and all should be movable
and should receive the same treatment when it comes to a “clean-up.”
Thus, you see, there is nothing in the house but the bare walls, and
where there are only bare walls you can go over them with a torch
and destroy every living thing. Care must be taken that there is no
straw about, or anything to burn the house. The careful man will
succeed with the torch; the careless man may have a conflagration,
but there is no risk whatever if these directions are followed.

Now about nests; there are various methods of building them.
They may be put in the house proper; they may be on the outside, on
a small platform, or shelf just wide enough for the nest boxes, which
should have covers on them—then the eggs may be gathered from the
outside—or a partition of wire might be run through the house, leaving
an alleyway, at the back, of three or four feet, so that the eggs could
be gathered inside the house while the nest boxes would not be in the
roosting quarters. A door at the end of the house would be necessary
to get into this sort of a hall-way; this is handy in rainy weather. It
is also good in the case of setting hens, as the nest boxes may be
drawn into the alley-way, but in case the nests are constructed this
way, there can be no going over the inside of the house with a lighted
torch. With the nests completely on the outside on a platform, all
danger from a torch is obviated.

Where a person keeps a large number of fowls the house should be
made in accordance therewith as regards length, and while some
keep several hundred in one flock, my experience is that for best
results, fowls should be put in flocks of fifty and not more than one
hundred. If a thousand fowls are kept, the poultry house may be

The Western Poultry Guide 27

“made of the above dimensions as to height and width, when it can be
made as long as necessary with wire partitions, the rooms being
fifteen feet wide for one hundred fowls and eight feet wide for fifty
fowls. Thus, with a thousand fowls divided into flocks of one hundred
each, ten runs would be required—divided into flocks of fifty, twenty
‘runs would be necessary.

The length of the runs are left to the option of the breeder, who
may make them longer or shorter as he elects. He may have double
yards for each flock, where green feed may be kept growing in one
of the yards all the time, but this cannot be done unless water is at
hand all the time. The breeder must be where he may obtain city
~water, and with the use of a hose, wet the growing vegetation, or he
must have a windmill or some means of irrigation where the water
.supply is permanent. If he does not have a double yard, he must
have an acre or two on which green stuff must be kept growing the
year ’round for the fowls, otherwise the egg supply will be shorter, as
it is impossible to get a full supply of eggs unless the fowls have
‘plenty of green feed. This green feed should be cabbage, kale, lettuce,
‘swiss chard, mustard and so on. The greater the variety the bettter
for the birds.

There are no definite rules about poultry houses. I am of the
‘opinion that breeders, as a rule, have intelligence enough to build
their houses according to the size of their flock, the length of their
‘purses and as convenient as possible. I repeat that different climates
-and different locations in the same climate, especially where climate
depends altogether on topography, as on this coast, require different
-construction and different facing, either to the north, south, east or
west, as the case may be. The house built so that the sun may shine
in it a portion of the day is the healthiest for the fowls, just as living
-rooms where the sun can shine the most is the healthiest for a family.

A poultry house should never be built in a clump of trees or in a
shaded place. It is all right to have shade for fowls, but that shade
should be away from the house entirely and this applies to dwelling
houses as well as chicken houses. There is nothing so bleak and
gloomy as a dwelling hid in perpetual shade, and it is just so with
~poultry houses.

There are colony houses which are scattered over a field and
moved when occasion demands—one of the best places for colony
‘houses is along a corn field. The corn furnishes shade for the birds,
and they have the run of the field to pick up hoppers, bugs, worms
and various insects. Colony houses are cheap things and can be
built by anyone. Then, there are houses for the setting hens, brooder
houses and so on, that cannot be described in a brief article like this,
as it would take a book larger than this to describe the various kinds
of houses and appliances. The main object of this chapter is to impress
-on the minds of beginners the necessity of having the poultry house

28 The Western Poultry Guide

plain and modest, so that it can be readily cleaned and kept free fronr
mites, ticks and other insects.

In this progressive age, poultry culture is progressive. It must
be. The old time fowls used to roost on trees, on the fences, on the
stalls in the stable, on the buggy, on the harness and in every con-
ceivable place; some are allowed to do this today, where the slouchy
poultry keeping exists. But the rule is, good chicken houses, kept well
cleaned and free from insects. There are a number of books devoted
entirely to poultry architecture—I have several, but have never had
use for any of them, as they give plans too elaborate. In this century
we have evolved from the elaborate poultry house to the plain, common-.
sense house, which is cheap and which can and must be kept clean,.
because an unclean house, full of mites and ticks and flees, cuts down.
the egg yield and reduces the vitality of the birds.

Progressive poultry culture has given us the open front house,.
which doesn’t need any windows, and which has reduced afflictions
among fowls fully eighty per cent. With the old, tight houses, in
some instances supplied with fire in the winter, the mortality among
fowls was heavy and many breeders had a room used as a hospital for
sick birds. This has been done away with entirely and afflicted
fowls are few as a result. In fact, there is no possible excuse now
for diseased fowls and any such are the result of wrong housing,
roosting and careless attention. With no mites, lice, or other insects
to trouble the fowls, and right feeding, there will be no diseases among
fowls. Cause produces effect, and when the cause is removed there
will be no ailing fowls. This, the open front poultry houses have:
largely solved, in this age of progressive poultry culture.

FEEDING FOWLS.

There are all sorts of theories about feeding. Books and books:
have been written on feeding. Some of them are too voluminous and
complicated and too “scientific” to be of any real value to anybody,.
especially amateurs. A breeder does not have to be a chemist to-
feed fowls, yet, some of these writers on feeding mix up the feed so
thoroughly with chemistry that a person, to understand them, would
have to understand chemistry.

Feeding may be divided into several sections, as follows: Feeding:
chicks; feeding grown fowls; feeding for eggs; dry feeding; wet or
mash feeding; hopper feeding; feeding to fatten for market; balanced
rations.

In feeding chicks I give only bread crumbs for the first three
days, corn bread and whole wheat bread. Then I begin to feed pin--
head oatmeal (called steel cut oats), fine cracked corn, cracked
wheat and plenty of lettuce. Chicks will begin to eat lettuce when
but a few days old. This I tie with a string (the heads) so the chicks
can pick at it. It is surprising the amount of lettuce they will.
consume. This is my main feed for chicks until they are a month

The Western Poultry Guide 29

old, and can eat whole wheat and larger cracked corn, and with
wheat, cracked and whole, cracked corn, occasionally sprouted oats and
some fish meat meal, with an occasional loaf of corn bread and table
scraps, I rear the chicks to maturity. In hoppers, hung on the chicken
house wall, I have bran, shorts, charcoal and fish meat meal mixed in
cne apartment and grit in another apartment, also charcoal. Oc-
casionally I give the chicks a feed of cornmeal, mixed so as to be
just crumbly with milk or water. Sometimes I make a mash of bran,
shorts, meat meal, and a little alfalfa meal, but all the time they are
supplied with lettuce, swiss chard, cabbage, Chinese mustard, and so
on, in rotation. I never feed any of the feeds of commerce, sold by
dealers, already mixed, but mix my own feeds, and know just what I
am feeding. This is about the extent of my chick feeding and I have
the healthiest of chicks; no ailments of any kind. Chicks love boiled
potatoes, and any kind of cooked vegetables; and so do old fowls, but
the main thing is to keep the birds absolutely free from mites, lice,
ticks, flees, and other insect pests. Feeding is very simple, as any
farmer’s wife will tell you.

In feeding grown fowls I follow the same feeding nearly as for
chicks. Wheat, cracked corn, sprouted oats, with a feed of cooked
barley at least twice a week; but wheat, oats and corn are my main
feeds; these are the stand-bys. The mashes are made the same as
described above for the chicks. The composition of the mashes are
~as follows: Cornmeal, oatmeal, bran, middlings, or shorts, equal parts;
alfalfa meal, enough to color the mash slightly green; fish meat meal,
one quart to each gallon of mash. Mix so as to be crumbly, with
water, or milk, sweet or sour. The fowls have dry mash all the time
in hoppers, same as the chicks. The fowls have all the green feed
they want, and an occasional feed of green cut bone, which I get at
the butchers at three cents per pound.

I never feed for eggs. There is more nonsense written about
“feeding for eggs” than any other phase of poultry culture. In the
laying season I feed heavily because fowls which are laying heavily
need to be fed well, and I want to accentuate the fact, and I want
beginners to remember it, that when fowls have layed right along for
months they need a rest, and do take a rest to get on a new coat of
feathers. During this time if the breeder stimulates his fowls with
drugs or any feed warranted to make them lay, he does so at the risk
of ruining his birds physically and reducing their vigor so that they
soon become unprofitable and have to be replaced by other stock.
There is nothing at all in “feeding for eggs;” and fowls which are
fed stimulants to force them to lay, will not lay fertile eggs; or, if
they be fertile, the germs are weak, and the chicks die not long after
being hatched. This will account for so many chicks dying after
being shipped from hatcheries. The fowls had been stimulated to
force them to lay more eggs, if possible, and these eggs sent to the
hatcheries produce weaklings. I have had a score of letters from

Cw
f—]

The Western Poultry Guide

people who had purchased chicks from the hatcheries, saying that the
most of their chicks had died. One man said he purchased 200 chicks.
and that 120 had died. This is not against the hatcheries, which I
think are a good thing and needed. There are plenty of feeds which
are stimulating and may be fed when required.

I have already described mash feeding, dry and wet. Breeders
can vary the mash to suit themselves, and breeders should experiment.
in feeding, as that is the only way we can learn. Practice goes a long
way toward perfection. All the breeder is after is “good results,” and
when he gets good results he is successful, no matter what plan of
feeding he adopts.

Fattening fowls does not come under the head of “feeding” but is
a different division of feeding. It is quite easy to fatten fowls by
keeping them in close confinement and feeding them fattening feeds,
and withholding green feed. Indian corn is the chief agent in the
process and may be fed in meal, cracked or whole, as the breeder
pleases.

I could draw this feeding advice out into pages and pages, but I
have some regard for the intelligence of those who read this book. I
have given you my plan of feeding. If you are successful, you are
cn the right road. Do not change your method to adopt some other
method. Let well enough alone. Still, as I say, it is all right to
experiment, yet it is sound sense, as well as economy, to stick fast to
a good thing.

There is much talk about “balanced” rations. You can’t balance the
ration unless it be in a wet mash. Fowls will unbalance any ration
you may make. They do it every time. Mix a ration and watch the
birds, and you will watch them pick out the ingredients or grains
they like best, and will throw the rest out of the feed trough to be
trodden under foot. It is almost impossible to make fowls eat all
you fix for them in the so-called “balanced” rations, unless it be
cooked together in such a way that the birds must eat the whole or
none. I have watched my birds do this many times. Fowls know
what they want to eat. How would you, reader, like to sit at a table
and be forced to eat of all the food on it, and of things, perhaps, which
you particularly disliked? Fowls have likes and dislikes. I have
never been able to make my fowls eat alfalfa meal, no difference how
nicely I fixed it up. In mashes, the birds pick out the other ingredients
and leave the alfalfa.

I give here a good ration for a mash which may be fed wet or dry:
Seven pounds of cornmeal; five pounds wheat middlings; four pounds
wheat bran; two pounds cut alfalfa or one pound of alfalfa meal;
three pounds of beef scrap or fish meat meal; six ounces of charcoal;
five pounds of steel cut oats.

There are feeds and feeds, formulas and formulas; but the be-
ginner, for whose benefit I am writing, will find the above formula

The Western Poultry Guide 31

as good as the best, and with the other advice contained in this chapter
the amateur will be able to feed for best results, and that is all that
is necessary. Too much, too voluminous, instruction confuses. A
little plain talk, a few plain directions devoid of perplexing terms about
“ash,” “protein,” “carbohydrates,” “fat,” and so on, will not make a
good chicken feeder out of an amateur. He is apt to think, and
rightly, that he will have to study chemistry in order to know how
to feed fowls, and he will feel like giving the thing up if such is the
case. Our grandmothers and grandfathers who raised many fowls
and good fowls, knew nothing about these chemical feeding terms,
and if you notice the farmer’s wife and daughters, who are the ones
who raise the fowls on the farms, they never take a thought about
protein, carbohydrates, and so on, but just feed good, sound grain,
plenty of milk, some corn bread occasionally, and the fowls grow
splendidly and the old birds shell out the eggs satisfactorily. This is
common sense in the poultry yard. My experience in feeding chicks
is that dry feeding is best. Dry feed will never sour, and the chicks
will never eat more than they want of it. From the time they are
a week old, I cut onions up very fine and give the chicks a good feed
three times a week. As a consequence, I never have any ailments
among my flocks, never have colds, catarrh, diarrhoea, worms or
anything of that nature. I am of the opinion that the onions ward
off afflictions.

The amateur will soon learn to feed intelligently, because right
feeding is very simple, and I want to expressly warn beginners to
beware of drugs, stimulants, tonics, stuff warranted “to make hens
lay,” stuff guaranteed to make “chicks grow and keep them healthy,”
and so on. Fowls and chicks never need anything but just good feed.
If a bird gets ailing, isolate it from the rest of the flock, and change
its feed, giving milk, boiled rice, cooked oatmeal, whole wheat bread
or corn bread and milk, and in nine cases out of ten the bird will
recover. I have tried it time and again, and know it’s the only way.
If any one who reads this wants any further information, I will be
glad to answer any letters directed to me personally.

2 The Western Poultry Guide

CHAPTER V

INCUBATION

By H. F. Rau, Tacoma, Washington, the “Quality Chickman,”’ Breeder
of White Leghorns and Rhode Island Reds.

em BOUT thirty years ago
| I decided to try arti-
ficial’ incubation, and
built my first incu-
bator; it is needless to
say that it was not a success.
Never having seen an incubator,
I had to figure out the princi-
ples myself, and my first hatch
was one chick from one hundred
and sixty-six eggs. This did
not discourage me and I began
experimenting to improve this
machine or build one that would
hatch a reasonable amount of
the eggs set. H. F. Rau
During the past thirty years

1 have built and operated a good many different kinds of machines,
besides the various kinds I bought and run. This wide experience
has given me knowledge that can be gained in no other way. One
may buy an incubator, follow instructions, and get a fair hatch, but
they never know the “why” of the results. They only know they did
as they were told and secured a good hatch. Such work does not
teach a person the real system of incubation, one must start at the
beginning and learn the effect of heat, ventilation and moisture on
the eggs and they will then know why such results were obtained.

TEMPERATURE VERY IMPORTANT.

An incubator, to give good results, must have complete control of
the temperature and it must be even in all parts of the egg chamber,
on same level, or on a level with the eggs, so that when you read the
thermometer you know that is the temperature of all the eggs. Fluctu-
ation of the temperature of one degree will do no harm, but this
should be equal with all eggs. A change from 98 to 105 degrees or
over is harmful and should not occur very often if a good hatch is
wanted.

The Western Poultry Guide 33

High temperature is far more harmful than low. I would much
rather find the temperature of my incubator at 98 than at 105. The
correct temperature is a question, because the different makes of
machines require different temperatures to obtain the best results.
Some machines will give the best hatch at 103 degrees, others at 102.
This, I think, is on account of the variation of the degree of heat be-
tween top and bottom of the eggs. A machine that is lightly constructed
will have a greater variation of temperature from top to bottom of the
eggs than one of better construction—also the manner in which the
heat is applied will have some effect on this. On account of this
variation, a different degree of heat is required at the top of the
eggs to get the correct average of heat to the eggs.

We use a well constructed machine and find a temperature of 101
the first week, or rather four or five days, then 101% for a week; 102
up to a few days before hatching, and 102‘ and 103 during hatching
will give the best results. Many differ as to the proper temperature
to get the best results at hatching time. Up to this season we did not
think as we do now, and we came to the conclusion only after a
season’s experience, when we had an opportunity to get tests that
found this to be a fact.

The past season we operated several large machines that held
1600 eggs each, and these machines had four compartments each.
These compartments, at hatching time, would vary in degree of
temperature from 101 to 105, and over at times. We found that a
temperature of 10214 and 103 gave the best hatches in number and
quality of chicks. We have even received good results at 101, but not
good at 105 or over.

These machines run fine and are well built, using less than one
quart of oil for twenty-four hours, during early part of the hatch and
less than a pint per day, near hatching time. The temperature runs
very even—we could hold it just as we wanted it up to hatching time,
and then it would vary some on account of the heat being thrown off
from the eggs, varying in the different sections. We did not try to
prevent this until we were satisfied which gave ux the best results,

Results of good incubation; 1240
chicks from 1500 eggs Another good hatch

34 The Western Poultry Guide

and after our season’s work we have arrived at the following: Start
the eggs at 101 degrees, run them for four or five days at this
temperature, run the temperature up to 102 and maintain this up to
the seventeenth or eighteenth day, then run it at 102% to 103, until
the hatch is finished. This is the temperature that will give you the
best results, if you have a well constructed incubator, if not, then
run a half degree higher or even one degree in extreme cases.

VENTILATION SECOND IN IMPORTANCE.

Ventilation has caused more loss, worry and trouble than any one
feature of artificial incubation, and yet, it is second in importance in
securing good results.

The reason for this is that it is possible to get good results by
using several different systems of ventilation—systems that are
directly opposite, also by using no ventilation at all. I must admit
that I never secured good results with the “no ventilation” system,
yet some claim the solution of incubation is no ventilation. The
argument that no air passes through eggs in a hen’s nest is no
argument at all, for when the hen leaves the nest, the eggs and air
surrounding them are warm. It rises from the eggs and the cold
air outside of the nest will fall in the nest to take the place of this
warm air that raises from the nest. This action is equal to air
passing down through the eggs in the incubator and the results are
the same.

We have experimented with various kinds of ventilation systems,
namely, top, bottom and side ventilation, using air brought into the
machine from a heater, passing out of the machine at the bottom,
through holes or cracks in the bottom; also out through ventilating
tubes, taking the air off the bottom, after passing down through the
eggs. We have taken this air off through side ventilation, on a level
with the top of the eggs, also out above the eggs and have used a
ventilation system, where the air enters the machine at the bottom
and goes out at the top; also where all outlets and entrances were in
the bottom, and with all the different systems, the results are about
the same. The one real issue is to apply the system properly. We
rather favor bottom ventilation; it is the more simple of all and is as
satisfactory as any.

The cry about retaining the carbonic acid gas in the machine is
not as necessary as some would have us believe. We find the carbonic
acid gas, as it passes through the shell from the eggs, decomposes the
shell sufficiently to allow the chick to break through.

We must consider airing the eggs with ventilation. Airing the
eggs is important—the expansion and contraction of the egg helps to
break down the shell particles so that the shell, at hatching time, is
very tender and breaks very easily. The amount of airing that we
have found to give good results is to air only while turning, for the
first week. The second week, air ten to fifteen minutes, depending

The Western Poultry Guide 35

upon the outside temperature. The third week, fifteen to twenty-five
minutes. The size of the air cell has but little to do with a hatch. We
have had good hatches when the air cell occupied one-fourth to one-
fifth of the eggs, and just as good when the air cell was not larger
than a five-cent piece.

By keeping tab on the air cell, one can see if the eggs are drying
down too fast; if they are, reduce the heat, ventilation and airing;.
if they are not drying down to suit you, increase this. We find
better results can be obtained by not drying the eggs down too much,
and then at hatching time, no other moisture will be required.

MOISTURE OF LITTLE IMPORTANCE,

If heat and ventilation is right, the moisture problem is solved,
but when they are wrong, then some arrangement must be made to
handle the moisture problem. I would much rather run an incubator
that does not require moisture applied than one that is not perfectly
adjusted. There are moisture cranks who try to build or run an
mcubator to see how much moisture they can use and yet secure fair
hatches, claiming that this is proof that applied moisture is necessary
to get a good hatch. I claim an incubator that requires moisture
applied during the hatch is not right in heat and ventilation.

The old hen does not use moisture, nature has provided for this
in the eggs, in fact, there is more water in the eggs than is required—
some must be evaporated, but we don’t want to dry down the eggs too
much, so some machines must use applied moisture to prevent this.

The air in the machine at the time the hatch is about half over
should be well saturated with moisture to prevent the chicks that are.
late coming out drying up and sticking to the shell. If the tempera-.
ture was high any time during the hatch—the liquid substance sur-
rounding the chick in the shell will be sticky and if the air is not real
moist they will stick in the shell. An over-amount of moisture at
hatching time is detrimental, inasmuch that the chicks will smother
or drown in the heavy moisture ladened air. We have had this to
happen by holding too much moisture in the machine while hatching.
This is not liable to occur in small machines, but it is in large ones.

Less moisture need be applied during warm weather than cold,
for less air passes through the machine, and the warm air entering
the machine carries more moisture than cooler air, during cold weather.
The results show that with the same ventilation, eggs will dry down
more in cold weather than warm. This must be taken into considera-
tion during incubation.

TURNING THE EGGS.

We set our machines at night and set the flame of the lamp so the -
heat will be less than 106 in the morning, then we have all day to
get the temperature settled down to 101 degrees before night. At the
end of twenty-four hours we change trays in the machine, then every
twelve hours until forty eight or sixty hours, when we turn the eggs:

26 The Western Poultry Guide

for the first time, doing it as quickly as possible without rough
handling. After this we turn the eggs every twelve hours until the
end of the eighteenth day.

We do not open the machine until the hatch is over. Our experi-
ence with machines we have purchased convinces us that some manu-
facturers do not understand their own machines, sending out instruc-
tions for operating them that are not right, and fail to give good
sesults, yet when the machine is run as it should be, it would give
satisfactory hatches.

Many of the so-called improvements on incubators are more for
advertising than real work. We have found that incubation is a very
simple operation and the machine that is simple, with no unnecessary
ventilation and valves for controlling ventilation and moisture is the
machine to buy. There is too much fuss made of incubation—it is
simply giving correct heat, air enough to furnish oxygen to the
growing germ and the problem is solved.

THE LAMP.

The bowl! should be well made and large enough to hold two days’
supply. Use good oil and you will only be required to fill and clean
the lamp every other day, this reducet labor one-half. Use good
wicks and a new one every other hatch It is also well to empty the
lamp bowl some times to clean out the water and dirt that collects
in the bowl. If you use a trip-burner, be sure to clean well every
time you fill the lamp, and see that the sleeve works freely, to prevent
trouble by sticking. Adjust the flame right, do not run it too high
so the sleeve will be above the tube very much—if so, it will heat and
gasify the oil and cause the flame to flutter, and further trouble.

The Western Poultry Guide 30

CHAPTER VI

ROOM BROODING AND THE BEST WAY TO
START IN THE POULTRY BUSINESS

By D. TANCRED, Kent, Wash., Breeder Trap-nested White Leghorns

masta) MIAN who takes up poultry raising with the intent of making:
oy 2 his living by it, and who expects to get his business on @
Mi fairly paying basis within a reasonable time, and with the
investment of a moderate amount of capital, should begim
with the day-old chicks and with as many as he can properly
care for in the growing stage, and afterw>rd when they have matured’
as layers. Heretofore the stumbling block m this business has beem
the brooding of the chicks. Incubation, as a separate division of the
business, pays after the necessary knowledge of the process has beem
cbtained by experience, and with the modern houses and equipment one
man could properly care for a sufficient number of layers to net him
a very good profit.

But raising the chicks! That was the rub. Brooders—whether of
the lamp, hot water pipe, or fireless type—were a great improvement.
over the natural hen mother and it was possible to rear chicks in large
numbers by their use; but the best possible results by those means didi
not adequately repay the value of the labor involved in operating them.
By the use of incubators or the large hatchers a man could hatch tem
times as many chicks as he could care for in individual brooders andi
this was too great a disproportion altogether. And a great dispropor—
tion existed between the number of layers that he could care for and
the number that he could raise by any brooding method known before:
room brooding was devised. Now let such a difference in efficiency
exist in the branches of any business and we may be sure that
strenuous efforts will be made to bring the least efficient branch to
the standard of efficiency attained by the others. So with chick
rearing. The efforts of intelligent poultry raisers to improve upom
inadequate methods of brooding resulted finally in the evolution of the
room brooder—a device at once so simple, natural and efficient that
the wonder is that it was not the first thing thought of when men
first began to try to improve upon and supersede the old hen mother.

The room brooder originated in Petaluma, California, and so quiet
was its advent that it is not easy to determine who first used it with
success. Mr. Thomas Vestal was the first one whom I heard of as
operating them with success, he having placed 6000 chicks in six
rooms, in the fall of 1908, and reared 93 per cent. of them to the

38 The Western Poultry Guide

broiler age. When I visited Petaluma early in January, 1909, for the
purpose of investigating their best methods of brooding I had heard
nothing of this method and, in fact, not many of the poultry raisers
there themselves had heard of it, and still fewer had paid it the least
‘attention. Nothing was known of it at the Petaluma Experiment

Flashlight of thirteen hundred chicks asleep in Room Brooder

Station, and one of the most prominent breeders and egg ranchers of
the district, whom I visited, scoffed at the nution, and showed me a
string of sectional hot water broode*s (with a capacity of 250 chicks
each) that he was then constructing, with the remark that there was
not likely ever to be any better way than that discovered. But seven
months later this very man was selling pullets raised by the new
method, and had himself advertised and put on the market an improved
distillate burner for use in the room brooders.

At the time I mention none of the experiment stations had heard
of the new way, nor any poultry paper; and, excepting for a casual
reference to it by a Petaluma paper, nothing was printed concerning it
until I published an account of it in The Ranch, November 1, 1909.
I continued to give it publicity in later issues of that paper and think
T may, with reason, claim to be mainly responsible for the installation
of the room brooder in large numbers in the Northwest. But I am by
no means a rabid advocate of this method. By no means. I have
always been at pains to state that great care was necessary in raising
chicks by this means and I have personally discouraged from using it
‘people whom I knew to be careless in the operation of lamp brooders;

The Western Poultry Guide 39

and who could not, therefore, be expected to exercise the needed care
with the distillate houses. By this method a man’s efficiency is multi-
plied four-fold and, as the cost of equipment is but one-fourth that of
the individual brooders, brooder house, pens and yards needed to raise
the same number of chicks, the efficiency of his capital is increased
four-fold also. And if handled to the best advantage a better lot of
chicks can be reared; at any rate such is the belief and experience of
many of us. But more than inat cannot be said for the room brooder;
and it seems to me that is enough: that it is unreasonable to expect
more. Raising young chicks—no n itter by what method—is not an
indolent man’s job. Constant watchfulness is necessary, and there is
always something to be done. During the brooding season a man
should be on the job all day long. His absences from his chicks should
be of the briefest possible. The use of the room brooder gives a man
a chance to achieve an adequate return for his work. He can feel at
the end that he has a satisfactory showing for a man’s day’s work.
But he has to keep fairly busy all day, because the chicks require
frequent attention and continual watchfulness.

There is a good deal of difference in the efficiency of the distillate
burners (or stoves, we use the two words indiscriminately) on the
market. I have investigated those most widely advertised and am
convinced that the one I am now using is the best one made. For
obvious reasons I refrain from giving the maker’s name here, but I
will gladly furnish my customers with that information, as it is to my
nterest that they should have complete success in brooding. The
best dimensions for the brood rooms are fourteen feet in width, four
ind one-half feet height of walls at side, with a quarter pitch roof,
naking the height of center of roof (or ridge) just eight feet. These
jJimensions are perfectly in accord with one another and with the
stove’s capacity, and should not be varied; but the length, which is
generally twenty-six feet, may be increased a few more feet if desired.
I found houses of the dimensions given above to be ideal in shape
and size for the brooding of from 1000 to 1300 chicks. I have not
space to go into the technical reasons of the superiority of this shaped
house over the square house advocated by some makers of burners,
but will say that I had plenty of opportunity to compare this house
with square ones operated by ‘neighbors and am thoroughly convinced
that it is much the best. The stove is placed in the center of the room
—pipe goes straight up, no bends—and the ventilation is supplied by
two box shafts, one at either end, on the principle of a dry kiln. The
fresh air enters by one shaft and the heated air escapes by the other.
(Plans for all this construction are furnished by the maker of the
stove). The stove man recommends that these air shafts be made
twelve inches square, but I believe that shafts twelve by twenty-four
inches will be better, and will make them that size in all the rooms I
operate next season. Two single sash windows are placed in each

40 The Western Poultry Guide

side of room, hinged at bottom, and opening inward into room from
the top. The window opening should be covered on outside with one
inch mesh wire netting and a strip of thin muslin drawn across the
opening when window is open to prevent cold air from plunking down
too hard on chicks. When the stove is in use the air shafts furnish
perfect ventilation; but when the use of the stove is discontinued
there is no longer a current of air through the shafts, and the windows
must be relied on for ventilation. I should have said that the opening
of the air shafts into the room should be provided with a slide to
regulate size of opening.

A quarter inch feed pipe supplies the stove with its fuel, This
pipe is run from the twenty gallon distillate tank placed outside of
room at a height of from three to four feet above floor, and has a
needle valve which controls the amount fed. Stove, valve, tank, one
length of stove pipe and the amount of feed pipe needed, are all
turnished by the stove manufacturer. It is advisable to cap the stove
pipe with a movable bonnet which, as it always faces away from the
wind, does away with any possibility of the flame of the burner being
blown out in a high wind. An eight inch board set in around the base
of the walls on a bevel and a further rounding or beveling off of the
corners of the room, prevent chicks from smothering in case they
start to pile up against the wall.

From 1000 to 1500 chicks may be reared successfully in the above
described room. Some California poultrymen have had good luck with
“#s many as 1750 to each room; but others have found this to be rather
too large a bunch, and have reduced the number, with better results.
I operated three rooms last spring, with 990, 1200 and 1300 chicks
respectively, and had equal success with them all; and next season I
will place about 1250 in each room. The chicks may be placed in the
brood room as soon as they are dry but should not receive their first
feed until forty-eight hours after the hatch is over. If the chicks are
shipped to you, ask the seller their exact age, so that you will begin
feeding at the proper time. Do not give them a drink first. Feed
them first and give them a drink an hour afterwards. And I have
found that for the first few weeks it is best not to let them drink in
the morning before they have the first feed of the day.

When the chicks are first placed in the room a circular enclosure
made of thin muslin, and twelve to fifteen inches high and twelve feet
in diameter should be staked around the stove, in order to keep the
chicks near the stove until they have learned to go to it for heat.
Three days, or at most four, is as long as this is needed and it should
then be removed. They must be watched at first and spread out with
a broom if they show a tendency to pile up. They do not give much
trouble this way, but should be frequently visited. The windows should
be furnished with good roller shades so that the room may be thor-
oughly darkened at will. In this way the chicks’ time of going to bed

The Western Poultry Guide 41

and getting up is under control. When the muslin fence is removed
watch chicks for awhile and herd them back to stove occasionally until
they learn to go there themselves. They soon learn. It is the same
with letting them out doors. When four days old, if the weather is
fine, they may be allowed out doors; but for the first two days watch
them and herd them back into the house occasionally. For the first
few days I only allow them outside for a few hours in the middle of
the day. I use a temporary fence at first, enclosing only a small
space, as that reduces the trouble of herding them indoors. Until the
chicks are well feathered do not let them out too early in the morning
or allow them to stay out too late in the afternoon. As soon as they
learn to go inside to get warm I increase their yard room, allowing
space about sixty feet square to each brood; and when three weeks
old I remove fence and give them the range of as much ground as
possible. By that time they have the homing instinct very strongly
developed and if several broods are allowed the run of the same
enclosure very few will fail to return to their own house. The more
range they have the better and I advocate placing the rooms 200 feet
apart if possible.

' At first the chicks should be fed every two hours, beginning at
daylight. A cardinal rule to be observed is to be careful not to over-
feed during the first two weeks, nor to underfeed after that. Thou-
sands of chicks suffer through too generous feeding at first, and too
seant feeding afterwards. The feed first used had better be a good
brand of prepared chick food and the chicks fed only what they will
scratch up quickly and eat with relish. No hard and fast rule can be
given but I generally found two quarts sufficient to a feed for 1200,
when starting. It should be scattered carefully and thinly over the
whole floor space so all will have an equal chance. Once a day I feed
them eggs, boiled from one to two hours, and ground up shells and all
in a food chopper. This I feed on tin pie plates, a dozen or more to
each room. The proper way is to keep making the rounds of the plates,
not dishing out too much at a time, for they eat this voraciously and,
if allowed, some of the huskiest will gorge themselves at the expense
of the others. On my place thousands of eggs are set every week,
and the infertile eggs tested out on the third day of incubation furnish
enough eggs for the youngsters until they are old enough to eat beef
scraps; and where this is not the case it will pay to buy fresh eggs at
the low price that prevails during the brooding season. When a week
old I give them two light feeds a week of fresh lean beef, boiled and
ground in food chopper, or else liver or beef hearts. From the be-
ginning I keep coarse bran before them all the time in troughs made
of eave spout stuff, with a lip made of a thin strip of wood to prevent
waste. When two weeks old I add a little beef scrap to this, but the
greatest care must be taken that only a good grade of meat scrap be
fed to young chicks. I am quite willing to tell my customers what

A2 The Western Poultry Guide

brands of meat scrap and chick food I prefer to use myself, but I
cannot afford to incur needless antagonism by recommending one
brand above another in this article, or to casual inquirers.

At two weeks of age the chicks may be fed some cracked wheat
and when three weeks old the greater part of their ration is wheat
and cracked corn. A little later I add oats to their ration, softening
them by scalding. At ten days I begin reducing the number of daily
feeds gradually and when three weeks old they are fed only four times
a day and when a month old three times is often enough; but they
have always the bran before them and as they grow I add some
rolled oats, corn meal and soy bean meal, strengthening the mash
gradually until, when three months of age it is about the same as that
furnished the laying hens. During this middle period of growth a
good deal of oats should be added to the ration, until it constitutes a
third of their total food. Lots of green stuff should be furnished the
chicks from the start. Early in the season chickweed and fine lawn
clippings can be had and later lettuce, dandelions, etc., are good.
When they are very small I throw green sods in to them and they
enjoy pulling them apart.

Fine grit should be furnished them with their first feed, and this
with fine wood charcoal and dried (commercial) bone, (and later on
oyster shell) should always be accessible to them. The supply of
water should be clean and plentiful. A good drinking vessel for use
at first is made of a quart bottle, with a groove one-fourth inch deep
in side of cork, placed upside down in a Mason jar cap and held in
place by an upright stick. The whole thing should be mounted on a
small block of wood three inches high. About eight of these are needed
in each room. Later on coal oil cans, rigged in much the same way,
may be used outside the room.

Most poultry raisers have trouble through toe picking and other
forms of cannibalism developed by their chicks. The superintendent
of poultry at a large state institution, who visited me lately, says he
believes it is a matter of heredity. I do not know as to that, but I
have very little trouble of that nature and when it has shown I have
secon checked it. I salt the semi-weekly meat feed—using only as
much salt as I would in seasoning to my own taste, and sometimes
add a few grains of black pepper. And I keep the chicks as busy as
possible, and that keeps them out of mischief. When I find them
resting I always scatter them a handful of chick food and that gets
them busy and I continue to feed them some chick food daily, until
they are a good size, just for the exercise they get scratching for it.
I have observed that it is almost invariably a dwarfed or runty chick
that starts the practice, and is most vicious at it; and as I promptly
kill all backward chicks I have but little trouble.

The chicks show by their actions if the right temperature is main-
tained, but I always use a good, tested thermometer as a check on

The Western Poultry Guide 43

them. I suspend it by a wire about twenty-seven inches from side of
stove and just clear of the chicks’ heads, and I find it registers 92
or 93 degrees when everything is going right at the beginning of the
brooding. During the first week of the process the chicks may need
a little smoothing out with a broom at bed time; and you should always
be on hand at that time, in case of trouble. They should be visited an
hour afterward to see if the heat is right, and again in the course of
the evening, so that when you pay a final visit before retiring you
can be sure that the temperature is settled. After you become used to
the care of the burner you will seldom find it necessary to visit the
brood room more than once during the night, one o’clock A. M. being
the best time, usually, at which time it will generally be found neces-
sary to strengthen the heat to offset the considerable drop in outside
temperature between that hour and five o’clock. But it is best to err
on the side of over caution and visit oftener than necessary until
thoroughly accustomed to the business.

During the coldest weather of last March my highest consumption
of distillate was seven gallons in twenty-four hours. The usual con-
sumption early in the hatch was six gallons every twenty-four hours,
gradually decreasing as the hatch progressed. About 180 gallons
were used for the early hatches. Sometimes a little more is consumed
if much rainy weather occurs late in hatch. The present cost of No. 1
distillate is seven cents per gallon f. o. b. Seattle.

During the first ten days the chicks, if comfortable, will form an
almost perfect circle around the stove and from fifteen to eighteen
inches away from it. At a very slight drop in the heat they move
nearer and if too hot they back away. You can drive them four feet
back by running up the temperature ten or more degrees. When the
chicks are in the right position I never look at the thermometer; but
when they are not I do, so as to see how much of an error I have to
correct. The stove that I use runs very evenly and a few degrees _
variation is not a serious matter anyway, but it is best to be careful.

When ten days old they generally break formation and divide into
bunches a little further away from stove. The temperature has
been gradually lowered three to five degrees meanwhile. It is still
necessary to superintend their going to bed, and perhaps regulate it a
little with the broom; but chicks that are trained right at the start
soon cease to give trouble in this manner. When six weeks old, roosts
should be placed in the room, and in two weeks’ time most of them
will be roosting. I place roosts fifteen inches from floor and a foot
apart. The cockerels should be removed and marketed at the very
earliest possible age, and at three months of age all the pullets should
be removed to other quarters excepting 200, which may be allowed to
remain in the room until full grown; unless the rainy weather sets in
before that time, in which case it is best to remove another hundred.

It is best to cover the floor of the room with a slight coating of
sand, or with loam if sand is not to be had. After the first week strew

44 The Western Poultry Guide

an inch of chopped straw on top of this for litter. That part of
floor nearest stove should be cleaned daily; all the sand and litter
removed, and the whole thing should be cleaned out and renewed
every day. Later when the chicks are larger the cleaning should
occur every day. Absolute cleanliness in all particulars is indispensi-
ble. No feature of the whole business is of more importance than this.

I hope I have succeeded in showing that chick rearing is a busy
job and one requiring continual attention. But it is very interesting
work indeed, and after the chicks are three weeks of age it is not
necessary to spend so much time with them, and more attention can
be given to other things. At the busiest time a good man can take
care of four of these room brooders properly, but I do not advise
inexperienced persons to attempt to care for more than two during
their first season. That will give them lots of time to attend to every-
thing in the very best manner and without getting rattled. After the
first month considerable time can be spent at other work, building
laying houses for instance; for it is not necessary to have any of the
equipment of the place, except the brood rooms, ready when starting
in. Everything else can be constructed long before it is needed. The
brood rooms themselves contain about $30 worth of material, exclusive
of the heating apparatus, which costs $22 more; and a carpenter can
build one in four days, and a handy amateur can do it in a week.
Starting with 1250 chicks to the room, at three months of age there
will probably be (on an average) 550 pullets and other quarters must
then be ready for 350 of them. I find a cheaply built open front
colony house eight by forty feet, with a shed roof, affords ample
accommodation for 200 of them until they are fully grown. One
hundred of them may be left there for the winter if financial condi-
tions render it necessary, but I prefer a different type of laying house.
For egg ranches I recommend as large a laying house as possible and,
if the house is sufficiently large, the fowls may with advantage be
kept closed in and not allowed outside runs during the whole of the-
rainy season.

Starting with 2500 chicks in two brood rooms it is reasonable to-
expect to bring 1000 good pullets to maturity. When seven months old
they will—if of a good laying strain—be paying their way and will
rapidly increase in earning capacity. Just how well they will do
depends a good deal on their owner, but I do not hesitate to say that
the man who is capable of making any other form of agriculture pay,.
will do still better with poultry.

The Western Poultry Guide 45

CHAPTER VII

FROM EIGHT-WEEK OLD PULLETS TO EGGS

By I. D. CAsry, Waitsburg, Wash., Proprietor Casey Poultry Plant

=qiN VIEW of the fact that the time is fast approaching when
eight week old pullets will be the popular method of purchasing,
HM] it will be of great importance for the buyer to know how to
care for them to make a profit.

There are two distinct methods of management which may
be adopted, depending entirely whether the buyer intends to supply
the market with eggs or meat, or whether he expects to use the
pullets for breeders.

First, we will consider the care of the stock for breeders, suppos-
ing that your pullets have had proper care to the eight week old stage.
Right here is where the care must be exercised. If she be a March
or April hatched Leghorn, she should have no form of animal food,
and we give as a reason for this, that it will hold down development,
until late winter, which is desirable. Here is the way to feed and care
for her: Fresh air, grit, cracked wheat, sprouted oats, oyster shell
and plenty of shade; plenty of range is also necessary, as is clean
roosting quarters. Let them take the weather as it comes—let them
wade in the snow and run in the wet grass; it means vitality to those
very chicks next spring.

The cockerels should be kept in more limited quarters, but given
about the same feed and care otherwise, and not allowed with the
pullets until two weeks before you wish to start incubation.

You may secure hens that will lay two hundred and fifty eggs
by using hens for breeders that have made a one hundred and fifty
egg record during their breeding year, but you cannot expect even a
one hundred and fifty egg hen from the hen that has made the two
hundred and fifty egg record during the breeding year. Therefore
you must give the pullet ample time to mature, if you wish to use her
for a breeder and obtain the best of results. Let her have her own
way through the early winter months, thus allowing her to build up
vitality and put herself in condition for breeding purposes.

You have heard the amateur say that a pullet is worthless as a
breeder. The reason for this is plainly understood, if thought is
given the above statements. The man who sells you chicks from a
high record hen during the season that she is making her record,
with a view of starting you on a firm foundation, is either a fake or he
is a fool. Many are the times we have received letters from our
customers, asking, “How is it that the chicks we buy of you develop

46 The Western Poultry Guide

into such good layers and the pullets we hatch from their eggs are
poor layers?” Bear with us a moment, kind reader, and your reason
will tell you why this is true.

When the time arrives for you to obtain eggs for the incubator, we
advise feeding as wide a ration of grain feed as it is possible for you
to obtain, and about ten pounds of green bone (or its equivalent in
protein) to each one hundred pullets, twice a week. Be sure and give
these pullets all the free range that your farm will allow, thus
promoting much exercise.

If the pullets were hatched in June or later, we find it positively
necessary to feed animal matter to get them to development properly
for the breeding season. In fact, you will find that the more regularly.
you feed animal matter, the faster they will develop, providing they
have plenty of range and a variety of grain feed. We find that late
hatched pullets mope and die, simply for the lack of animal food. It
may be, if they have plenty of range and there is running water and
there are not too many in a flock, they will find insects enough to
supply the animal food, but when there is quite a number on the
same range, even though it be a good range, the insects become scarce
and you must substitute this animal matter.

It is not necessary to tell the man who has only fifty pullets how
to care for them to produce good breeders. Ninety-five per cent of
the people who keep fifty fowls make a success in their small way,
vut when a man attempts to breed from one thousand or two thousand
and upwards, it is a different story, and herein lies the reason for
the failures.

FOR MARKET EGGS.

These pullets, which we are about to consider, must be hatched
from the eggs produced by the pullets considered above, as they make
the best market egg producers. These pullets can be fed, in addition
to grain ration, an abundance of animal matter, until you have suc-
ceeded to bring them to laying in five or six months—perhaps six
months is plenty early to have any pullets begin laying and for
best results they should be hatched in late April or May and kept
growing. While there are many secrets claimed, the principal secret
of having a good supply of market eggs in the fall months is good
feed, free range, a good supply of animal food and good judgment in
caring for your fowls. The secret does not lie in a can or package of
a preparation placed on the market, by a man behind a “get rich
quick” scheme. Don’t forget this.

Here is something else for you to store away for future reference,
“Don’t attempt to reproduce your flock by using these egg-producers
as breeders, unless you have given the hens a good winter’s rest,
and even by doing this she is never as good as a breeder.” Instead
of feeding prepared “egg makers” as advertised by firms who have
never had experience in the poultry business, prepare some one of

The Western Poultry Guide AT

the following feeds, which are really egg-makers. It is useless to
try to feed with the idea of forcing a pullet to lay, if the fowl is not
receiving the proper food, from which she may produce eggs. Milk,
in any form, green cut bone, soy bean meal, fresh meat of any kind
in connection with green feed and a variety of grain, will produce
eggs and will assist in early development.

We are giving you this advice, which is based on our fourteen years
of experience on the Pacific Coast, and while several of our first
attempts at poultry raising were failures, we have accepted them as
lessons, and, as we have nibbled at the bait of failure we wish to
guard you from the unnecessary stumbles, if we can. We find that if
the pullets are placed in their laying houses they should never be
allowed out in the mud or snow, for if they are laying, such a change
from their “comfy” house to the cold rain and snow will check their
laying and it will be several days before you can get them in laying
condition again.

Be careful not to over-feed with animal matter, for ten pounds
of green bone to fifty hens, three times a-week, is sufficient and will
force eggs, if fed with sprouted oats, cracked corn and wheat, witn
plenty of oyster shell and sand for grit. We think the greatest mis
take made by poultrymen is not providing a variety of feed. Fowls
desire a change the same as you or I, and table scraps, milk, cabbage,.
kale, potatoes, etc., are all valuable; don’t feed them twice a day, then
go into the house and perch your feet upon the mantle with the stem
of your briar pipe between your teeth and through the smoke from
your pipe, dream of a case of 60-cent eggs. Let the hen know that
you are on the job and they will soon let you know that they are
with you.

As a parting thought, let us suggest that you should not wait
until eggs are fifty or sixty cents the dozen before you begin to look
toward building up a more convenient poultry plant, for you will
find it will take several months to get everything ship-shape and it
will take even longer to bring your stock up to the highest efficiency.
Treat the poultry business as a business and like a good business
it will pay you.

z tes The Western Poultry Guide

CHAPTER VIII

THE MARKET MAN AND THE POULTRY MAN

By C. G. SHAWEN, Pomeroy, Washington, Breeder of R. C. Rhode
Island Reds

g} UR real aim in raising
poultry should be to
make the venture pay.
Poultry on the farm
pays because the fowls
harvest a large crop of shattered
grains that otherwise would be
wasted. The eggs from the flock
and the increase furnish a vari-
ety to the table and the surplus
to supply the table with other
articles needful from the grocer.
Very few grocers buy live poul-
try and here is where the market
man comes in with the cash.

My long experience in deal- C. G. Shawen
ing in poultry has taught me
many things. Nearly every farmer will have a few fowls to sell
during the course of a year, and nearly all of them will sell to some
dealer, hence, the dealer will know the general character of every
one of his clientele. If I want to find out the real makeup of a man,
I buy a few chickens of him. A dealer will go out of his way or give
a fancy price to a customer who is honest and strictly on the square,
and who does not assume that the marketman is crooked in his
dealings. There is no reason why their business relations should be
anything else but pleasant. People will accuse the dealer of being
dishonest in his weights and dealings when the dealer will be abso-
lutely on the square and the seller putting up the shady deal. The
dealer realizes that he must give his customers satisfaction or they
won’t come back, so how foolish it is for the shady producer to get
on a “high horse” because he was found out. The dealer is not going
to be bilked, for he is in the business to make some money.

Many producers assume the dealer is getting too large a profit so
they proceed to use some scheme to get ahead of him. He may bilk
him once, but he don’t do it a second time. The dealer spots this
man and makes a character-reading, and stores it away in his mind
for further use. As a rule a dealer bids as closely as he dares—

The Western Poultry Guide A

quite frequently too close, as I know to my sorrow. He will know
within a fraction of a cent how much he can pay and the wise dealer
and successful buyer pays very little attention to published quotations
in the papers and no attention at all to the extravagant bids from
the “get-rich-quick,” “fly-by-night” concerns who are looking for
suckers (and they get the suckers in producers who imagine the local
dealer is not paying them enough for their stuff). The frequent use
of the telephone or telegraph is the only sure way of keeping posted.

The producer will get a square deal from the buyers if they deal.
square with him. The trouble is, so large a number don’t deal square,,
They will catch their fowls with dogs, and hence the birds are scratched
and torn and the buyers lose. They feed their birds all they can stuff
Lefore bringing them in—to make them weigh heavy—wheat at tem
cents per pound. Some people will feed just a little and think the
buyer won’t notice it. Their excuse is that it is not humane to let
them go without their breakfast. Some people have sick chickens—
afflicted with roup, wens, waterbag, tuberculosis, cholera, frozen
feet, etc., and attempt to work them off on an unsuspecting buyer
and quite frequently they do, and if the dealer is looking for a shady
reputation all he needs to do to get it, is to cull out these sick ones;
and straightway this arbiter of all that is good(?) and true(?) will!
start something. The itinerant buyer understands these schemes and’
he is on hand with his short weights and ‘‘does” the saint as well as;
the sinner because they are all strangers to him.

The most unjust of all schemes used is the practice of weighing~
a fowl or two out of a large bunch (and the biggest birds are the ones
usually weighed because easily caught) on a little ‘“‘two-bit” spring
scale which is made to weigh a pound heavy and then expect the:
whole bunch to hold up to this average when the whole lot is weighed
at one time on a scale that cost the marketman forty or fifty dollars.
However, most producers who use these scales when convinced of”
their inaccuracy are quite liberal in their expectations. The dealers
as a class are absolutely honest and times without number give a.
square deal when they get a “rotten” one in return.

I was in business two or more years before I became wise enough
and experienced enough to be able to break over from the wholesaler -
te the retailer. If it took me that length of time to get in touch with
the higher prices, how does the average producer of a few fowls expect.
to break in? As soon as I obtained the better prices I passed them:
along and now my clientele get them and I make no more money than;
I did formerly.

When the producer markets his stuff and he takes pains to see
that his fowls are fat, crops empty of feed, perfectly healthy, not
scarred or torn, he will be perfectly satisfied with the treatment
received.

50 The Western Poultry Guide

I want to express my thanks to the large majority of my patrons
‘who trust me and I know I have the greatest confidence in them.
‘This is probably true of all marketmen.

For the benefit of all, and especially the marketmen in embryo, I
would say that I have always sold for cash and never consigned on
commission. A concern that purchases outright can usually be relied
upon. However, before you trust your shipments to a new firm, do
a little investigating and ascertain from Dunn or Bradstreet whether
ssuch concern has a commercial rating.

If the man you ship to overpays you on error, call his attention
to the matter in a gentlemanly way. Trust to his honesty just the
‘same as you want your clientele to trust to yours. If shrinkage is
excessive at times, don’t “holler” too ]oud, remember your customers,
for you yourself may be to blame. In shipping alive, use good, solid,
but light coops. Count the fowls when shipping and make arrange-
ments with your buyer to do the same. Sometimes fowls have a
strange way of breaking out, getting away, hence the excessive
shrinkage at times.

I ship alive in warm weather and dressed in cold weather. The
weather is cool enough to ship one hundred and fifty to two hundred
miles when frost comes. There is much more profit in shipping
dressed. I pick turkeys dry and scald all other fowls.

Dealing in poultry is only a part of my line of business, but I
‘keep a complete record of every buy and sale—person’s name, kind of
fowls, pounds and price per pound, and amount paid or received, as
the case may be. Also, all expenditures for feed, telephone and tele-
graph tolls, advertising, etc. Keeping record serves three purposes:
you get a mailing list which is’ invaluable; you know whether or ne
you are getting ahead, and how much; protection in case of stclen
poultry. Don’t buy from small boys.

Shipping alive long distances is not profitable. The shrinkage on
live stuff will run about six per cent—sometimes as low as three
per cent and again as much as fifteen per cent; whenever shipments
shrink, on empty crop, ten per cent and over, something is wrong. In
-shipping alive you can put one hundred and twenty pounds of fowls
in a thirty-pound coop, which equals one hundred and fifty pounds—
the express limit. You pay express on fowls, shrinkage, coop and
pay to get your coop back. In shipping dressed, you put two and a
lbalf times as much in a barrel, that weighs one half as much as a
‘coop, and costs perhaps ten cents more than it does to get your coop
back. The shrinkage is about three per cent more and you get two
cents more per pound. Six hundred pounds of fowls require five
coops or two barrels of dressed; express rate $1.50 per hundred
weight—price per pound paid, ten cents.

An illustration on a four cent margin basis:

The Western Poultry Guide 51

LIVE,

SUG, pounds of fowls, at Oe per, POUN. ..- <5. .--ctcbcrsscketesdeocesrsecd-+-"veoken $60.00
600 pounds of fowls plus 150 Ibs. coops (5) at $1.50 ewt., express 11.25

RevurnvoL tive coups 12h. 2 OV REL | BITE IR POEM: Th 62 VION Sere Hit,
(CHOSIR Set Ee aa os een Sees te Eee ee ane ae Ce em Bee $72.90
Assuming shrinkage at 6 per cent.

600 pounds less 6 per cent shrinkage—564 pounds at 14¢_............. 78.96
rote {ay aait--p-ta- omg U5l.J..2e lene bliss tf gow..puetianh= 6.06

DRESSED.

600 pounds of fowls ‘at 10c-per pound ~.....200 ek. $60.00

Cost o1,uwo, barrels ati25cyeach 2. 1.42 en eee ela ool ee es 50
Shrinkage on dressing, 10 per cent.

600 lbs. less 10 per cent—540 lbs. plus 30 lbs. (two bbls) —570
series oOMexpressyess BOT Fay NI Cty eens aaa oe ene tee 8.55
Costpee sa eh beh SE hg ih re ee ee hn $69.05

Hau mounas dressed fowls at U6e. os. oc cee nn Peach ore cetchceaMnonp eye eesy 86.40
DEV OLENE eee GL UME 28 ER IAS See Scheele Seg WELLS LAIN tb dh Bvedon och bebe et $1705

Deduct from this the cost of feed and labor if you hire the work
done. Do the work yourself. Fowls dress away from nine and a half
to ten and a half per cent. Suppose the shrinkage on the live ship-
ment was ten per cent instead of six per cent, the profits would be
cut $2.40 or down to $3.46. About all a shipper can figure on, on a
margin of 4 cents, is ten per cent on the investment. On the same
margin and same investment he can figure on a twenty-five per cent
profit by shipping dressed. The wholesaler wants you to ship alive
because he does the dressing and takes the extra profit. The shrinkage
on the dressed shipment, when there is one, and there ought not to
be any, is from one-half a per cent to one per cent. All dressed ship-
ments should be thoroughly cooled before packing.

How I dress poultry. I kill chickens by placing the wings between
my knees with their feet out, take hold of their head and slit their
throats through the ear lobes from one side to the other, and with a
quick wrench dislocate the head from the neck. (Don’t cut the throat—
slit it). I kill about a dozen at a time and toss them in a barrel to do
their kicking. I have always scalded chickens, ducks and geese.
Have the water at a little less than boiling—about one hundred and
five degrees is about right. Take the chicken by the head and feet
and dip, back downward. Don’t scald too much. Turn fowl over and
scald the feet and tail while picking the neck. Keep the head out of
the water. Have a pan of cold water on your picking bench. Cool
your hands in this water. You should do a first-class job in two or
three minutes, counting time used in killing. I kill thirty an hour.
Peel off the feet; the carcas looks better and sells better and brings
you more money. Don’t bear down too heavy on the fowls when

52 The Western Poultry Guide

picking; if you rub too hard you will take off too much of the thin
outside skin (and in case of young ones, will tear the fowl). Keep
as much of the outside skin on as possible. It makes the chicken look
better and preserves it from germs. Have a large oak barrel ready,
two-thirds or more full of cold water, and put the dressed stock in
this water to cool off.

Ducks and geese I hang up by the feet with a weight in their
mouth and stick from side to side. This keeps the feathers clean.
Bloody feathers won’t scald evenly. I kill one at a time and have one
dying while picking one. I pick a duck in about seven minutes and
a goose in ten minutes. Scalding ducks and geese is the whole secret.
Water must be hot, nearly to the boiling point. Pull their feet back-
ward over the back and grasp the head and dip, breast down. The
hot water will take hold of the feathers and open them, and the fowls
scald evenly. Dipping this way does not scald the wings too much.
Don’t scald too much; five or six dips are enough. Try feathers at
the base of the neck on the back, if scalded enough, hold up by the
head and dip feet and tail several times. Throw on bench, back down
and head towards you, and get busy, quick. Take down, and all as
you go. Don’t rub too heavy; work your hand along and grasp the
feathers—work from the front towards the tail, except on the neck.
In short, in picking ducks and geese remember these points: Keep
blood off feathers; kill one at a time; have water hot; dip breast
cownward, and don’t scald too much; if not scalded enough, dip again;
cool off in water. I do nearly all my killing in the morning. The
fowls are in this cold water until evening, when I take them out and
spread them, or hang them to dry and let the water run out of their
mouths. I ship next morning. The object of putting them in water is
primarily to cool them, also the water prevents excessive shrinkage
and the fowls look nice and fresh, otherwise they would look brown
where the white outside skin was rubbed off in dressing.

Turkeys are strung up, feet apart, with a weight in the mouth. I
never could see any advantage to be gained by sticking turkeys in the
mouth. Too frequently it is a poor stick and then you sure have
trouble. I slit through the neck at the base of the jaws from side to
side—hold the wings until the bird gives up and flaps his tail down
between his legs. He has let loose of his feathers then and one may
work as fast as he pleases. Remember this: Don’t pull out a single
feather until he flaps his tail, or you will very likely have a job on
your hands. Hang up to cool—water is not used in cooling.

About drawing poultry—I never draw the fowls. The birds have
to fast at least twenty-four hours before butchering and they must
be empty, hence there is nothing in them to spoil. Any fowl should
not be prepared for eating until a day and night after killing. Vast
numbers of well-meaning people knock the undrawn fowl from sheer
ignorance. They will go out and get a hen that is full from top to

The Western Poultry Guide 53

bottom with food, that is in various stages of digestion, and of course
the carcas smells. Sure it would stink if the birds were undrawn and
shipped in that condition. These people judge the shippers and the
stock by themselves and their way of preparing the bird.

Why these people jump to the conclusion that infection takes place
first in the entrails, beats me. The Creator so ordered things that
infection takes place first in the death wound or injury. Hence if the
forward and afterward parts of a fowl are opened to take the inside
out the whole of the raw surface of the interior is exposed to the
action of bacteria from the air. That clear, lymph covering of the
interior flesh sours as quickly as milk when exposed to the air. The
entrails were made to withstand infection and are the last parts to
become tainted. Of course, if they are full (as the average person
assumes, because they know no better) the contents become sour, but
the entrails do not. Therefore is the reason why undrawn fowls keep
better and are better than drawn fowls.

I have tried several schemes and ways to handle poultry but the
above outlines are my conclusions as actually practiced, and a
result of actual experience to attain the three results—profit, speed,
efficiency.

OT)
“

The Western Poultry Guide

CHAPTER IX

SUCCESSFUL POULTRY RAISING —COMMON
SENSE AND FRESH AIR

By B.S. KENNEDY, McMinnville, Oregon, Proprietor of Fresh Air
Hatchery

suitable place, select a
sandy, gravely, rolling place
near good markets and ship-
ping facilities. If you already
have a place, make the best of it.
Should it be flat, cold, damp land,
make all your buildings with floors,
four or five feet from the ground,
using the under room for the chick-
ens’ rest room during the summer
months, and closing it in winter if
it becomes damp.

Be moderate in every turn you
make, do not overdo your means, B.S. Kennedy
chicken knowledge or grounds. Sub-
scribe for one or two good poultry papers published in the locality in
which you live. If you have a position or way by which you are
earning reasonable wages, do not give it up; you can make a small
start by caring for your birds morning, noon and night. Hold on to
your job until you are forced by the increase of your chickens to give
up one or the other, by this time you can decide at which end to
let loose.

There are three popular ways of starting in the business—buying
baby chicks, buying pullets, and buying eggs and hatching your own
chicks. If you prefer to make a start with baby chicks, you must make
preparations for them in due time so that when you get them you
will be ready. You must have a good brooder house first, and while
the chicks are growing to maturity you can build other necessary
buildings at odd times. I wish I could have a talk with every one who
is puzzled over this brooder proposition, and tell them how to prevent
their chicks from crowding, and piling up in the brooder and suffering
for pure, fresh air, for I consider this the most vital part of the whole
business, it matters not how strong and vigorous the little fellows

i

The Western Poultry Guide 55

are when placed in the brooder, and how well you water and feed them,
unless your brooder is properly built, warmed and ventilated you
will fail.

Build your brooder house twenty-four feet wide as long as desired,
with five foot walls, little less than one-third pitch, double roof with
rafters well tied together with one-by-six, seven feet from the floor
and sealed overhead with good shiplap or matched lumber; eight
and one-half feet on each side of the building floored with good
matched lumber, leaving seven feet the entire length of the building
without floor. On each side of this dirt walk-way build a pipe box
seven inches deep and wide enough to allow two pipes running from
the heaters at one end of the building.

These heaters are advertised and recommended in the leading
poultry journals. They cause a constant circulation of hot water
through these pipes and regulate their heat, enabling the poultryman
to keep the right temperature in his brooders at all times, and are
indispensible in the brooder house; full directions of installing and
operating accompany each heater.

After the heaters are installed and pipes arranged, the covering
is tightly placed over the top of the box and round holes five inches
in diameter are cut in the center of the top, four feet apart; over
these holes invert a galvanized iron can, nine inches deep, and have the
holes just large enough for the cans to fit in tightly and not work
any farther down than one inch. Before the cans are placed, punch
three-eighth inch holes in the side of the can all around, not farther
from the bottom than two inches—this is very important as it allows
the heat to pass out over the heads of the chicks.

Then build a cool air chamber two inches high, directly over the
pipe box by laying a matched lumber floor, on sills, two inches high,
cross ways on the pipe box; a five inch hole must be cut for them to
project through; be sure these cans fit very closely to prevent litter
from falling into the cool air chamber. Now make a false floor, two:
by two feet, with a hole cut in the center of it, so it will fit over the
can; this floor is intended to be taken out and cleaned at will. Build
sides around these two by two floors to keep chicks from running”
about. Also build a hover of light lumber, say twenty inches square,,
with a leg at each corner just high enough to clear the inverted can..
Fringe around the edge of this hover to partially retain the heat.

Between these two rows of continuous brooders, make a concrete
walk, the floors on each side of the building are intended for runs:
for the chicks, and are about sixteen inches from the bottom to allow
eats and small dogs to run for rats, and the brooders are built high:
enough for the false floor in each brooder to be on a level with the
runs. This will cause the brooders and runs to be about eighteen
inches higher than the concrete walk which makes it convenient for
feeding and cleaning.

56 The Western Poultry Guide

Now bore one inch holes, four inches from the concrete walk, into
the side of the pipe box. These holes must be about six inches apart,

which allows the fresh air to pass into the pipe box, and is heated by® »

the hot pipes and passes up through the inverted cans out through
the holes over the backs of the chicks. This gives top warmth, as the
cool air chamber is full of cool air and keeps the floor of the brooder
from getting very warm. The rest of the fixtures about the building
are arranged to suit your convenience, but this is undoubtedly the
most successful brooder I have ever used.

When it is completed, and about a day before you get your chicks,
fill the boiler of the heater, start your fire and heat gradually up to
ninety degrees under the hovers and regulate the heater to keep this
temperature. Place one-fourth inch of sand on the floors of each
brooder and cover this with fine cut clover or alfalfa—this will all be
warmed by the heat and will be in nice shape for the reception of
your baby chicks.

Do not feed the little chicks until they are at least fifty hours of
age—then have little pans about one and a half inches deep for
charcoal, grit and fine ground oyster shells. Be sure the grit, char-
coal and shells are ground fine—have a pan for each, do not mix them
together. Have one-half gallon earthen fountains and give them pure
water and the grit, charcoal and shells for the first feed. After they
have eaten and pecked about fifteen minutes, tuck them back in the
brooders to rest and take a little nap for two hours. At that time,
allow them to come out into the run, where you have the floor sprinkled
heavily with sand and fine cut straw or clover hay. Sprinkle a little
prepared chick feed about in places where they can easily find it and
induce them to scratch. It will surprise you how early they will begin
to scratch for their feed and it should be the aim of every poultryman
to encourage them to scratch from the start. After they get to scratch-
ing, never feed grains only in deep litter and let them dig it out.
Keep the grit, charcoal and shells before them at all times, and about
the third day, mix up a dry mash, consisting of equal parts corn meal,
bran and middlings, one-tenth part gluten meal and one-tenth part
best beef scraps finely sifted. Keep this in shallow boxes before them
all the time, if any signs of diarrhoea is discovered, or if you notice
at any time any signs of indigestion—get, at the drug store, eight
ounces of sulphate of iron, one-half ounce of sulphuric acid. Place
the sulphate of iron in one gallon of very hot water and let it remain
over night or several hours—then when it is cool, pour in the sulphuric
acid and use one teaspoonful of this in every gallon of drinking water
and be sure to keep your drinking fountains clean, by washing them
well every evening and airing over night. For white diarrhoea this
is also good: One teaspoonful of five per cent carbolic acid in ten
quarts of fresh water.

The Western Poultry Guide 57

Be sure the water is renewed twice daily, and keep fountains clean.
But if you follow these directions of feeding, force the chicks to scratch
for the chick feed, keep them warm and happy, after each meal, of
twenty minutes, see that they go back in their brooder and rest, for
the first three days, you will have no occasion to need these remedies—
they will grow like weeds. Be sure to have little outside runs for them
and when you first let them out, be sure they are able to stand it and
that it is a warm sunny day. Spread straw over most of the runs for
them to play on, as it keeps their feet warm. Prepare a place to
sprout oats and as soon as they are a week old begin to give them
sprouted oats. Place it in a wire rack so they will not run over it.
They will pick it out of the rack and run with it and this gives good
exercise. This is what you must keep constantly in your mind: To
give the chicks ways and means of exercising, rustling and digging
for their living.

Now it is very hard to convey on paper one-tenth of what is in my
mind that I would have you understand in a way that would be
plain to you, and I find that my time and space is limited, so I will
have to merely give an outline of these things and pass on to some
other important points. But before I leave this subject, I want to
say: Be sure the chicks you buy are from good laying stock, stock
that you know is vigorous, healthy and has never had any diseases,
but have been well developed and properly bred and kept. For if they
are not, failure will be your experience.

BUYING PULLETS.

The next way to start is to buy pullets about two to four months
of age. Be just as careful in doing this as when you buy baby chicks—
go to the breeder of whom you are to get your stock, get a history of
the stock from which the pullets were bred; know that they are as
good layers and have always been healthy and well kept. Be on
the job when the pullets are cooped and see that you get good, smooth,
healthy pullets of uniform size, type and color and free from lice.

The houses must be in readiness and built as follows: If you own
a farm of not less than thirty acres, the colony plan is recommended
best for profitable poultry culture; this requires less investments,
gives the chickens free and healthy range, and the most fertile eggs.
No fences or gates to bother with, and the feeding and watering is a
simple problem. It is done by using a horse to a low truck or sled,
making a trip every night and morning. The houses are built with
one-sided roof, and are about ten by fourteen feet, with rear walls
four feet high, open fronts seven feet high. In dry districts no floors
are needed, simply use the ground; have the perches about three feet
from the ground, but if it becomes damp and creates a dampness inside
the house at night, better have a good matched floor one foot from the
ground and keep sand and deep litter on the floors all the time; these

58 The Western Poultry Guide

houses are built on runners and are moved easily with a team of
horses, to any part of the farm. Keep them scattered out about two
hundred yards apart all over the place, for best results.

If your space is limited, and you want to raise chickens on an
extensive scale you must use the intensive methods, which means
many chickens on small space.

Build your houses either on the continuous plan or many small
ones close together. The continuous house is about sixteen feet wide
and as long as you desire. It is open front, facing away from prevail-
ing winds and storms; in flat land and wet, cold climates, build the
floors four or five feet from the ground. The under room can be used
to much advantage in warm, dry weather as a cool resting place and
in winter it may be closed, but the idea is to keep your floors dry
and keep them covered with deep litter for scratching rooms.

The dropping boards are about two feet from the floor, with
perches hinged to the rear wall ten inches above the boards. These
perches can be raised to give easy cleaning of the boards.

Build a rear and front yard to each house, whether small or long, .
so they may be kept sown in “greens” for the poultry at all times;
while one yard is being pastured off by the chickens, the other may
be cultivated and sown to barley, oats or rape and in dry weather can
be watered and grown quickly.

Before I leave this part of the business, I want to especially
impress upon your minds the importance of cleanliness. If you use
the intensive method and do not keep your plant perfectly clean, you
will wish you never had heard of the chicken business. While there
are many commendable features in the intensive methods, and many
great and prosperous yards in operation today under this plan, unless
strict sanitary conditions are kept, the whole business will be a
failure. It must be kept clean and all contaminated yards and grounds
prevented. Contagious diseases must be looked after carefully, and
the premises cleaned and sprayed often.

BUYING EGGS.

The third and last way mentioned in tuis article is to buy eggs:
and hatch your own chicks.

The same careful method must be used as in the other ways of
starting. Be sure to know that the eggs you buy are from good
laying stock and that they have always been well kept, hearty and
without disease. See that they are turned twice a'‘day and kept in
a cool place while being saved up for you, and that they are not more:
than one week old—the fresher the better. Ask the advice of some
experienced poultryman and those who have had experience in hatching
chickens as to the best kind of incubators to use. I will not presume
to suggest what make to use, but do not be influenced by anyone

The Western Poultry Guide 59

that some other machine is cheaper and just as good—be influenced
by experienced poultrymen.

Follow the instructions with the machine, as the manufacturer
knows his own machine best and is capable of telling you the very
best way to run it. I will not advise you along these lines, but I must
give you my plans of building an incubator house, as it is very im-
portant to have the correct amount of moisture and ventilation in the
incubator house. Build the floor of concrete with four inch concrete
walls; lay the sills on this wall, build a frame building with eight
foot double walls. Good shiplap or matched lumber ceiling all over
_ the inside and a rustic outside, with two by four studding; this allows
a four inch space between walls. Now comes the ventilation. Close
attention please. Make ventilators in the comb of the roof to allow
the foul air to pass out; cut holes ten by twenty-four inches in the
center of the ceiling, about eight feet apart; cut same sized holes in
the inside wall at the top of the sills, midway between those in the
ceiling; cut same sized holes in the outside wall directly under the
eve and over those inside, arrange the outside holes with shutters so
that during severe, cold, stormy winds they may be operated if
necessary to prevent too much inlet of cold air. After a short time,
the operator will become accustomed to the proper conditions of the
inside air of the incubator house so that when he steps into it, he can
tell instantly whether it is right or not and can operate these shutters
accordingly.

You will readily see the great advantage of this method of ventila-
tion. The fresh air passes into these outside ventilators, down between
walls, out into the room, gathers up the foul air and passes it up
through the ventilators in the ceiling and out through the comb. Of
all the different methods of ventilation for anything of this kind,
this beats any I have ever used. Your floor is solid, and there is no
jar in the room; the walls are double with cool air space between to
prevent the room from getting too warm in hot weather. In other
words, the outside temperature effects the inside temperature but
little and you can run your machine more satisfactorily.

Now my time and space is about up. I hope you have understood
me all the way through—as I said before, I have dealt on rather a
large scale but the novice or experienced poultryman who desires to
keep only a few dozen or a hundred or so can make use of these plans
‘on a small scale. Instead of building a large incubator room, he can
use a small building already on the place; tear out the floor, use the
ground instead of concrete, make a shaft running from the top
ventilator holt to the lower one. If the walls are single, boards bat-
tened on the outside, the air will pass in at the top, down the shaft,
out in the room near the floor, and if the building is high enough for
a ceiling, cut sufficient holes in it for the foul air to pass out. If it
is not high enough and has no ceiling, make a hole in the top of the

606 The Western Poultry Guide

roof, any old way, to get the foul air out. Instead of building a large
brooder house, make a few single brooders on same plan, say have
them three feet square, heated with a lamp; first floor of heavy sheet
iron, fitting very closely around the edges to prevent the fumes from
coming up among the chicks. Just under this iron, in the center, place
a very low lamp, this is, with large flat fount, with low chimney. In
one end or side of this lower lamp chamber, make a little door and
bore a hole in it to allow the fumes to pass out. The door is used for
placing the lamp, which heats up all this iron bottom, giving heat to
an upper chamber, two inches high—this is the hot chamber, with some
inch holes bored on one side to allow the fresh air to pass in and up
through the inverted can as in the other plan. These will accommo-
date one hundred chicks at first, which may be divided up as they
grow older. The houses for laying stock can be built on the same
plan with double yards, only on small scales.

In conclusion, I will say, that after I have spent the best part of my
life in the poultry business, there is no other vocation as pleasant and
profitable, if the same careful judgment and caution is exercised that
must be practiced in any other business proposition. Success is only
secured by honest, persistent efforts on your part. Be a live-wire—
be alert to all the good things to be had on all sides. Be a sticker,
stay with it through thick and thin and you will reach the goal
in the end.

The Western Poultry Guide 61

CHAPTER X

POULTRY DISEASES— THEIR CAUSES AND
PREVENTION

By G. E. CoNKEY, Cleveland, Ohio.

Y BUSINESS for
twenty years has
been the treatment
of poultry diseases.
I have written a book
on the subject, as some of you
doubtless know. I am writing
now on a special phase of the
subject—and the most important
part of it. I may be able to tell
you some things new to you. But
let us hope that most of what I
tell you now, you already know!

For I am going to show you
how most diseases of poultry are
preventable. I am going to point
out the causes of 99 per cent of
common poultry ailments. If
you know the cause of a disorder
you should then be able to pre-
vent it. It is a fact that most
diseases have preventable causes, G. E. Conkey
and especially is this true of ,
those diseases which are hardest to cure.

In the first place, there are two classes of ailments of poultry—

‘ ; ?
diseases of stock and diseases of management.

It is plain to see that certain stock have inherited weaknesses and
general lack of stamina or resistance to hardship, accident or disease.
Such stock is quite liable to disaster, no matter what the poultryman’s
equipment or care. On the other hand, certain stock, inheriting great
vitality and natural strength and resistance, will easily bear up under
conditions far from satisfactory. In other words, weak stock under
ideal conditions will probably show less favorably than vigorous stock
under poor conditions. You can’t maintain a state of health when
there is no foundation for it. Of course you can improve the health
condition but that is not always worth while, in the lower animals. At
the same time the most vigorous natural vitality is lessened if the

G2 The Western Poultry Guide

fowl is subjected to unnatural hardship and strain. And it is always
true, that no matter what the degree of success under poor conditions,
it would be vastly better if those conditions were made right. The
point I wish to make is this: It is never profitable to put up with
poor conditions. Your fowls may survive or even show good progress,
but you never get the most possible profit in the poultry business,
unless you make it your business to see that conditions are right.

The difference between the man who keeps chickens and the busi-
ness poultryman is this: The real poultryman never rests until he
feels sure conditions are right. In other words he is basing his success
on the law that nature will follow the line of least resistance. He
puts as little as possible resistance in the way of nature. Thus he
profits by her most favorable results.

Having settled the question of stock, the poultryman can turn all
his attention to management. On management will depend his success
in battling with the problem of disease.

Let us have a clear idea to begin with as to all that comes under
management. Housing and yarding come under management—and
housing and yarding have a vast lot to do with disease. Feeding and
watering the stock are the next points in management. Mistakes in
feeding, or carelessness as regards purity of the water supply are the
beginning of many forms of intestinal and digestive diseases.

However suitable the house and yards, remember houses and yards
are unnatural restrictions for poultry, and unless carefully looked
after they soon become entirely unfit for further use. This brings us
io the large class of ailments which are of germ origin and might
really be called diseases of domestication, for they follow on the con-
ditions due to overcrowding and close confinement of stock in a
restricted space. Against diseases of domestication, in other words
infection, we have but one weapon, and that is sanitation—a whole-
some and wholesale cleaning up and disinfecting of the poultry quar-
ters, not neglecting a single inch of space. In addition to the germ
diseases which seem to follow close domestication there are the serious
troubles from parasites, especially from lice and mites. While it is
natural that the fowl’s body should harbor a few lice, the conditions
which make it possible for these lice to develop in such numbers as to
be really injurious are entirely unnatural. Lice and mites are just
another curse of domestication. The poultryman who benefits by this
domestication of fowls, should be willing enough to combat this curse
of such domestication. But how often does a man look cheerful when
he goes out to fight lice and mites?

Stop a minute and line up here what we have and you will see that
preventing disease in poultry depends on

(1) Selecting sound stock—that is, good individuals from reliable
stock, whatever your breed.

(2) Housing and yarding them in a manner best calculated to
promote health.

The Western Poultry Guide 63

(8) Feeding wholesomely, and wisely, as to quantity, quality and
manner of feeding.

(4) Sanitation—reasonable care and cleanliness in all things relat-
ing to the flock

(5) Policing the flock—that is, protecting from marauding para-
sites, including gape-worms, but principally lice and mites, chiggers,
stick-tights, fleas, blue-bugs, ete. Policing also includes vigilance in
the matter of disease, detecting sick fowls promptly and isolating them
from the flock.

We will go back to the statement that most diseases of poultry are
preventable, especially those hardest to cure. Some friend at some
stage of your life has undoubtedly advised you that a wee ounce of
prevention was worth a whole pound of cure; and perhaps the same
friend expressed his opinion that it was easier to prevent than to cure.
You often hear his statement and I agree with it, and preach it. But
ft want to say right here that there is nothing about the subject of
diseases which is “easy’”—either to prevent or to cure.

Of the two, prevention is easier than curing—but you can see for
yourself that with the above five points to cover, prevention has
nothing easy about it—it is a full sized job. It means painstaking
care in all details of poultry management. It means hard work and
vnremitting care for little details, not one day, then skip a day, but
day in and day out, seven days in the week, and fifty-two weeks in
the year.

While it is true you might neglect some one or more important
details in management and still never know any serious trouble with
your flock, you are making a dangerous experiment every time you
take chances and there is more “luck” than management in the results.

On the other hand, many poultrymen seemingly follow every im-
portant detail of management and still have occasional outbreaks of
disastrous effect. But in every such case when you get right down
and study out the problem, you see that somewhere some serious
mistake has been made, unconsciously of course, and the disastrous
outbreak of disease in the flock was no more than the natural result.

It’s results, and not intentions, that count.

For fowls do not get sick and die right off just from contrariness,
er to spite their owner, or to prove to the pessimist that there’s no
money in hens. Disease and death are a natural result, not a freak
cf nature. Every effect has its cause. It is up to science to find each
cause and lay down the rule; and then it’s up to you to apply it.

There are men who let their chickens shift for themselves—then
wonder why they “don’t do well.” Or expose their fowls in shadeless
yards in summer, or abandon them to swarming lice, yet talk about
their lazy, loafing shiftless hens that don’t even pay for their keep.
Or, a man may leave chinks or knot-holes in his poultry house and then
when roup season comes he gets the natural result. Or he may give
himself a vacation in summer and marvel to find in early fall that

€4 The Western Poultry Guide

the poultry quarters are dirty and damp, just suited for incubating:
“chickenpox,” Or maybe it is another type of man who prides himself
on really expert management, who pushes his flock to the limit all
winter long and has plenty of eggs to sell—and then attempts’ to use:
the same over-worked fowls for breeding stock. Or with the best of
intentions he may carry the principle of breeding too far and marvel
at the degeneration which is the natural result.

The gist of prevention is right breeding, right feeding, right
housing. Disease in any form traces back to neglect of some essentials
in management of these points.

Let us take up in turn the most serious poultry diseases and study
their causes. Every poultryman would include in such a list, Roup,
Bronchitis, Cholera, White Diarrhoea, Gapes, Poisoning, including
Mould (Aspergillosis), and Limberneck (Ptomaine poisoning), Chick-
enpox or Sorehead, and that all embracing source of poultry afflic-
tions—Lice.

Roup is about the worst disease of the poultry yard. It may occur
any time of the year, but commonly in what is known as roup season,
late fall, winter and early spring. It generally begins with a cold,
following exposure to sudden change in tem-
perature. A sudden change in the weather
or a cold rain may start the simple cold,
which later develop into roup symptoms.
Now what do we usually find in a case of
roup? A draught of air blowing directly on
the heads of the fowls as they roost at night,
or overheating as a result of over-crowded
conditions and poor ventilation in the poul-
try house. Where fowls are allowed to
over-crowd at night they become heated and
then when they get out in the chill of the-
morning they catch cold, which is very likely
to develop into roup. Or it may be the over-
; heated condition of the air near the roosts
Early stage of Roup—establishes a draught through some over-

ans ear ne €YeS}ooked chink or crack or knot-hole. Such a
draught will strike most naturally on the
fowls at roost. The liability of disease is increased if there are any
filth accumulations in the poultry house. A fowl with a cold is in just
the right low condition to take infection of any sort. Germs which
would be resisted by the natural vitality of the body, find a sickly or
out-of-condition fowl just the right favorable host, and it quickly suc-
cumbs to disease.

Clearly the right system of housing would prevent over-crowding,
especially on the roosts at night; prevent danger from over-heating
and impure air for breathing, by insuring perfect ventilation for the —
poultry house. Ventilation and fresh air do not mean draughts of air..

The Western Poultry Guide 65

Fresh air is absolutely necessary for the health of your flock; but
draughts of air will absolutely bring trouble sometime or other, accord-
ing to your particular brand of poultryman’s “luck.” One reason
why so many favor the open front and the curtain front style of house
is because they settle this vital problem of ventilation without danger
cf draught. Clearly the right poultry management would guard against
accumulations of filth and disease-germ beds. Filth always means
risk of disease.

When a poultryman has roup in his flock and has positively guarded
against causes given above, the trouble must be traced to direct infec-
tion by germs brought into flock either by a new bird, or on the feet
of visitors from an infected plant, or less often by means of germ-
laden air, or polluted water supply. Do not overlook any possible source
of infection. Always quarantine new birds for at least fourteen days
to give any infection a chance to develop without risk to the flock.

Another common disease, often mistaken for roup, is bronchitis.
With most poultrymen anything in the nature of cold is “roup.” Like
roup, bronchitis is traced to sudden changes in temperature, but
instead of affecting the eyes, nose, etc., the irritation extends to the
bronchial tubes. Sometimes the irritation is due to breathing a dust-
laden atmosphere or irritation from lime, ete. But usually filthy
quarters and bad ventilation cause the inflammation. While bronchitis
is distinct from roup and should be differently treated, the cause is
the same, and the disease is subject to the same rules for prevention.

Cholera presents a different class of diseases; for under this one
Lead are grouped a great variety of digestive disorders, bowel trouble,
etc. The real Asiatic cholera is practically unknown in this country
and is of course a specific germ disease. Cholera as the poultrymen
of this country know it is any form of intestinal irritation, or imperfect
digestion, ranging all the way from simple diarrhoea from upset diges-
tion, to enteritis. With the exception of white diarrhoea which is now
better understood than formerly, and is classed as an entirely distinct
disease, all cholera in chicks or grown fowls is due to some fault in
feeding, or to some infection allowed to get into feed. The fault in
feeding may be too much animal food or too much green food, or it
may be from unfit, that is, spoiled, food. A common cause is feeding
sloppy food, and then allowing it to lie around before the flock until
soured. Sometime the trouble is with dirty or undisinfected feeding
and drinking utensils, or stale and polluted water. Sometimes the infec-
tion is direct from filth accumulations, or from droppings from a
neglected case of cholera. Of course, no matter what the sickness,
prompt isolation of the sick bird from the rest is the only reasonable
course—for infection spreads quickly among all classes of domesticated
. animals. Not only must the carcass of a dead bird be removed, but
all droppings must be cleared away and the quarters disinfected
thoroughly. In most contagious diseases the body discharges are the
principal source of infection.

66 The Western Poultry Guide

Right feeding—that is, right selection of foods, right condition as
to quality and careful cleaning of feeding utensils—combined with
sanitary care, will prevent cholera diseases.

White diarrhoea—so long mistaken as a digestive malady of little
chicks—is now recognized as a bacillary disease due to direct infection
in the body of the chick itself, from infected parent stock; or in the
shell from which the chick is hatched. The disease may be spread from
the droppings of affected birds. But the common cause is direct
infection in the eggs used for hatching. The best prevention is to
treat the parent stock. As the principal infection is in the egg, most
often on the shell—which takes up the germ while the egg is passing
through the diseased cloaca of the hen—one of the most practical
means of preventing is to disinfect all eggs used for incubation. For
this 95 per cent grain alcohol is usually recommended, but a reliable
disinfectant solution can be used as well. Of course the egg trays
should be thorocghly scalded and disinfected, and burlap parts in the
nursery and elsewhere should be replaced with fresh pieces. A con-
siderable number of proprietary remedies are on the market which
claim to prevent the disease in mature stock or in new-hatched chicks.
ior the most part, these treatments are still in the experimental stage
and the poultryman will do well to confine himself to those which are
offered on merit, with some positive guarantee attached.

Another common disease of little chicks is gapes. It is one of the
very easiest to prevent—and every poultryman knows it is one of the
most annoying to cure. As the cause of the disease is a parasite—the
gape worm, or rather worms, which are found in attached pairs in the
trachea of the little chick—and as this parasitic worm has its origin
in the common earth worm, the best thing is for the poultryman to keep
little chicks off such ground and away from other chicks which are
infected and which are liable to cough up the worms and thus expose
other chicks; as of course other chicks greedily pick them up. It is
never safe to start a flock on grocnd that has been used before by
gape-infected chicks. If they cannot be given new ground, they will
have to be kept on a platform covered with new fresh earth that is
known to be safe from infection; and this earth will have to be renewed
at intervals to keep it fresh.

Where it is absolutely impossible to remove to new ground, the
only thing is to take extra precautions disinfecting, using some power-
ful and thoroughly reliable disinfectant solution. While it is true that
with tonic treatment to restore vitality to the little chick, and drastic
treatment to kill the gape-worms in the wind-pipe, you can often save

your chicks even though badly infected, gapes is certainly a disease:
which is easier to prevent in the first place, by a little more care in

selecting the run for the flock.

Chickenpox, or sorehead as some poultrymen call it, is claiming
more and more attention among chicken men. The scabby warts on
comb, lobes and face are often mistaken for accidental injuries, instead.

| The Western Poultry Guide 67

of being recognized as the symptoms of disease. This confusion may
account for some neglect of the proper study of chickenpox disease
for many years.

In damp, cold weather in the fall, chickenpox is very apt to make
its appearance wherever any neglect of the poultry house during the
summer has resulted in an accumulation of droppings, and these have-
become wet. Chickenpox starts with a
fungus growth, which multiplies in
damp quarters very rapidly. While the
disease is not necessarily fatal, it is
very contagious and troublesome—and
could far better be prevented. Scrup-
ulous care in the matter of cleaning the
poultry house in late summer and fall,
and special care to keep the quarters
dry all the time, and sunned occasional-
ly, will prevent this “smallpox of the
chicken yard” from ever making its ap-
pearance. Of course along with this
must be proper care to keep infected
birds from the flock. All strange birds
‘should be duly quarantined, no matter
what the reputation and endorsement of
their previous poultry yard. Never take
anything for granted when handling
any one’s else chickens!

Poisoning is one common cause of
trouble in poultry yards. Many strange diseases which are referred!
to me prove on investigation simple cases of poisoning. Sometimes:
very strange symptoms are reported in connection with these myster—
ious cases. But usually the common symptoms are the only ones noted?
—such as trembling, convulsions, and drowsiness and hiding away in»
dark places. Usually such cases are discovered too late to make am
antidote or emptying the crop effective. But even where the poultry-
man knows exactly what antidote to use, or has it on hand ready for
the emergency, how much better to avoid all danger in the first. place:
by preventing the distribution of poisonous substances in places where:
the flock can get at it?

Many householders and poultry men are quite careless in the matter-
of using insect killers, or throw out such substances as salt meat, salt
brine, lye, etc., in places where the chickens are liable to suffer the
consequences. One very common source of poisoning in fowls is old
paint, fertilizer mixtures, etc., etc., left in unseemly places. Many
fowls meet death every season from such easily preventable causes...
One often “dosn’t think”—until too late! Mould, or Aspergillosis as:
it is scientifically termed, is really poisoning from mouldy hay or
scratching material, inhaled by the fowl—or more often from mouldyy

Chickenpox or Sore Head—
Showing scabby warts

68 The Western Poultry Guide

ood which is eaten. Some unthinking people even throw out such
wnfit material as mouldy spoiled vegetables, or musty, burned wheat,
with the expectations that their chickens will “get the good of it.”
Now mould is one of the diseases which can’t be successfully treated.
Here is a case where you must prevent in the first place or take your
loss if it comes.

Limberneck is really poisoning. Limberneck is the peculiar symp-
tom which follows ptomaine poisoning. Any rotten, putrid animal
matter fed to chickens, or to which they find access accidentally, is
more than likely to poison
them. Some poultrymen
think “limberneck” is a
“contagious” disease. It
isn’t contagious—one bird
can’t get it from another.
But they all get it from
the same cauwse—for what
one fowl gains access to
the whole flock feast on--
and thus the whole flock
usually comes down with

limberneck. While limber-
S> -Sgdx'}neck is easily treated by
SSS A) antidote, how much easier
Limber Neck—Paralysis due to ptomaine to prevent all danger in
poisoning the first place. A little
more care in feeding only
wholesome meats and fish; and special care in seeing that the premises
are kept free from dead fowls, dead rats or carcasses of any sort,
would make fewer hurry calls at the druggists. Burning and deep
‘burying of all dead animals or putrid animal matter, is always the
‘safest way.

While we could go on in this fashion and name practically every
known poultry disease, the above should cover the most important
:ailments, and certainly cover all cawses—

Except for LICE, the one great cause which explains so many
@iseases, so many setbacks, so many poor egg records, so much of
the poultryman’s loss.

It is hardly too much to say that lice make more trouble and loss
for poultrymen than all other causes combined.

In fact, my first advice to the amateur poultrykeeper is to look
for lice.

If you don’t find them, then look again.

If a fowl is not doing well, or is in any respect below standard the
ehances are largely that the whole cause of trouble is parasites—
ecollectively speaking—lice. If this little talk to poultrykeepers could

The Western Poultry Guide 69

serve to impress this one fact more firmly, it will be time and effort
excellently well spent.

The time to look for lice is all the time, but chiefly in warm weather.
If neglected at this time, that is if allowed to breed unmolested, they
increase so rapidly that within a few short weeks they will own most.
of the shares in your poultry plant and take practically all the profits.
It is absurd to tolerate such a partnership.

When you go into the poultry business, go into business with the
poultry and not with the lice which are liable to infest them. It is
necessary to realize in the first place that lice and poultry go together.
But on the other hand, lice and profits never go together. You take
care of the lice question—and in nine times out of ten your poultry
will take care of your profits. That’s the best advice I can give any
one on the subject of success with poultry. ,

I can imagine now the expression of Mrs. Jones or Mrs. Smith or
any other careful housekeeper who also “keeps chickens.” She is so
sure her fowls don’t have any lice. But I know that lice are natural
to fowls. Umless they have just been treated for lice, I could take up:
almost anybody’s bird at random, hold it up by the feet, ruffle the
feathers, and then sift lice powder into the plumage, shaking it well
down to the skin, stand the fowl on a sheet of paper, and after a
shake or two down would come a shower of lice on the paper—dead
lice, if the powder is what it should be—and I never would use any
powder which will not stand such a test. Lice are easily scared or
stunned, but not so easily killed. And the dead louse is the only kind!
you can safely have around your premises. Insist on a lice powder:
that kills lice, not merely stuns them or scares them, or you will have
your work to do all over again. Mrs. Jones and Mrs. Smith, won’t:
you please try this experiment?

And here is a job for Mr. Jones or Mr. Smith. There is a certaim
kind of louse which lives in the poultry house and only attacks the
fowls by night. This is the “mite.” The mite has all the habits of a
certain other well-known pest—the horror of all good housewives, and
they certainly know how to make war on these fellows and keep them
absolutely out of their well-kept houses. The mite of the poultry house
is own cousin to this villian, the bedbug—is in fact a sort of poultry
bedbug, hiding in cracks and walls or on roosts by day, and only
coming out at night to swarm over the helpless birds as they roost.
The lice found on the bodies of fowls irritate and sap the energies of
the bird; but the lice or “‘mites” of the poultry house actually suck
blood, thus sap the vitality of the fowls as they roost, as well as:
destroying their rest. Now, Mrs. Smith or Mrs. Jones can do this job,
but it’s a heavy one, so I would offer it first to Mr. Poultrykeeper—
the job of making war on mites.

For war it is. When you get after mites in the poultry house you
must get after them right. Get into old clothes, clean up, remove all

70 The Western Poultry Guide

droppings and accumulations. Then, with a good disinfectant or lice
liquid go over the whole place. Spray the walls, make sure to get into
every crack and corner. Use it extra strong on roosts, on dropping
board and in nests. If the interior of the house has not been white-
-washed in some time it will be necessary to apply this. You know the
rule is white-wash once a year at least—and twice a year is best.
Your aim is to destroy the pest at its source. You cannot treat mites
on the bodies of your fowls, you must get after them in the breeding
places in cracks and corners where they hide by day. Only a liquid
or fumes will do this. Fumes are more dangerous and less handy to
use, so that we always advise using a good lice liquid for this work.

If you are in a section where fleas, chiggers, blue-bugs, etc., cause
trouble, remember that hot whitewash will give you a fresh start; and
then constant vigilance with strong disinfectant and lice liquid will
keep things right. Remember that sunlight is always a big help against
parasites such as these, as well as a general disinfectant and pre-
ventive of germ disease.

There is a certain kind of louse that established itself on the
head of the older fowls but leaves them to attack the chicks soon as
the chicks are hatched. This is the long-bodied head-louse—one of the
biggest sources of loss of little chicks. These lice fasten themselves on
the head or neck, sometimes under the wing of the chick, but usually
‘on the neck, at the base of the skull. They suck the blood, sometimes
‘even penetrate the skull into the brain of the little chick. Two or
three of these lice can easily kill a chick or stunt its growth entirely.
When a little chick droops always look for these lice. In the case of
hhead-lice only individual treatment will answer. This treatment must
‘be in the form of a head-louse ointment, for powders and such like
‘substances will not reach them.

Thus you see there are three different kinds of lice. You must
tackle all three. No one method of treatment or of prevention will
answer. There are three kinds, remember, and your poultry manage-
ment must cover all three.

The best rule is to get after them early in the season—never let
them get a good start. Keep ahead of the game. ‘Keep ahead of the
game.” That’s the best rule always, whether applied to the subject of
lice or disease. Never let trouble get a serious start.

Study causes, then practice prevention, in all your poultry manage-
ment. It’s prevention that counts.

Study the needs of your particular flock and the purpose of your
particular plant. Find out and then follow the best system of poultry
management for that individual flock and purpose and you will have
settled practically nine-tenths of all trouble with poultry diseases.

When poultrymen write direct to me (as I invite you to do, if you
wish to) regarding poultry troubles, there is one word they use very
often, and it’s a word I don’t like to admit into any serious talk on

The Western Poultry Guide 71

poultry. That word they use is “luck.” When I run into this word in
a poultryman’s letter, I substitute another word, which I consider is
better. This word is management. Thus, when a poultryman writes
me “I had such bad luck this season,” I read it “I had such bad manage-
ment this season” and study the case from this viewpoint. Or if he
‘writes “I’m getting along fine this time—never had such good luck
before!” I write straight off and congratulate him on his good
management.

I don’t believe in poultrymen’s “luck.” I certainly know there’s
no “luck” about poultry diseases—it’s good or bad management that
determines a given result.

72 The Western Poultry Guide

CHAPTER XI

SANITARY WATER FOUNTAINS
By D. H. Gray, Armona, California, Breeder of S. C. White Leghorns

FN E of the perplexing problems in poultry culture is furnishing
the fowls at all times with clean, cool water, and as the
scientist gives us the information that the egg is composed of
about 73 per cent water, it can be seen that the hen should not
be allowed to go thirsty.

There are some who water their poultry by the means of a bucket
and hard labor, in fact I adopted this plan at first myself, but after
cne summer’s experience I found that it kept one man going almost
constantly carrying water to keep the hens supplied. It is next to
impossible to keep up a steady egg yield and follow the method of
carrying water to the hens, especially when one has several hundred
or several thousand.

It is very convenient to have a brook or ditch running through the
yards, but we are told by those that have had experience that this is
a dangerous method, for disease is easily spread by this means.

The next idea that yould present itself would be to have water
piped to each yard, and there be turned on by the man who cares for
the hens. But this method has its drawbacks as when one is depending
upon hired help to do that part of the work, it will often occur that
the man will neglect to turn on the faucet. If these faucets are allowed
to drip as is sometimes done, there will not be enough water, and then
again there will be too much, so that puddles are formed, and the hens
are allowed to contract disease.

So, after thinking over the different ways and means, which one
might follow, I decided to make use of the float-valve, like those used
for watering livestock, only of smaller dimensions. In the place of
galvanized iron or tin, I made concrete troughs at a very little expense.

The water is first run in a barrel from the tower tank, as the
direct pressure from the tank on the valve does not work as satisfac-
tory as when taken from the barrel. The water is then piped to the
yards, one trough supplying two yards by being placed half on each
side of the fence that divides the pens.

It will be seen by the drawing that the concrete trough is placed
about eighteen inches above the ground on a platform two feet wide
and three feet long, so that the fowls cannot scratch litter into the
water, and still not too high for them to hop on the platform to drink.

The Western Poultry Guide 73

The platform also serves to keep the ground dry, under the trough,
and thus aid sanitation.

The trough is four and one-half inches deep, two feet long, and ten
inches wide, inside measurement. It is made by making the outside

form of one by four lumber,
inside measurement being
twelve by twenty-six inches.
As can be seen by sketch No.
2, inside of this frame is
placed a strip of galvanized
iron five inches wide, and
avout five feet six inches [ee ee
long. This is put around in-
side of the square wood frame to make the corners rounding. Inside
of this is placed the inside form of the trough so that it is bottomside
up. This form should be made of galvanized iron, and in such a
manner that there are no corners, and when put inside of the band of
iron the bottom should be about one-half inch below the top of this
band of galvanized iron, thus making the bottom of the trough about
a half inch thick. It is a good plan to put over the curved form some
wire netting, and thus reinforce the trough, of course this wire does
rot want to be made to appear on the surface of the trough but be
kept covered by the cement.

The edge of this cup-shaped form is so made that the edge of it is

nce atest al Nd i RRR ce cae
onsnenrraemeinrewten mri Sn Stein eh ny

eo a Na

sap

a RNA i ee

74 The Western Poultry Guide

about one inch from the band strip of galvanized iron, and in arrang-
ing the form in this way the top of the trough has an edge one inch
thick all around.

As soon as everything is put in place preparatory to pouring in
the cement, all parts of the galvanized iron that are to be exposed to
the cement should be thoroughly greased with any kind of machine or
other oil, for if this ig not done the cement will stick to the iron and
it will be almost impossible to take the form away from the trough.

When all is in readiness a mixture of one part cement to one part
sand and enough water to mix well should be poured into the form and
be allowed to set one day or until the cement is rather hard, when all
parts of the form should be taken off, and the inside of the trough
finished with a mixture of pure cement and water, being rubbed down
by hand or a smooth block, so that the’ inside surface is perfectly
smooth. When the trough is thoroughly dry, after a day or two, it
may be put upon the platform as shown in sketch No. 1, and water
piped to it through a three-fourths-inch main pipe, reduced down to
a half-inch to which the float valve is screwed. It can be seen in
the drawing that instead of a common ball for the float as is used on
larger troughs, a square float is made of light weight galvanized
iron, one inch thick, three inches wide, and six inches long. This
float is soldered to the rod that controls the valve, and it being
flat will give plenty of room for the water control.

It will be seen that above the trough are suspended two pieces of
light weight galvanized iron, one foot wide and three feet long. A
hinge is formed by fastening them to a strand of the fence above.
There are also two wire hooks that are fastened to a strand still
further up on the fence, that hook under the outer edge of the strips
of iron to keep them spread out over the trough, forming a roof, thus
affording a shade for the water. In the winter time these strips of
iron are released from the hooks and are allowed to hang, and in this
manner keeps the water at the proper temperature.

It will also be noted that there is a wire hook fastened to the
platform, that hooks over the pipe to keep the valve down so that the
float can properly control the valve.

It might be asked why the troughs are not made of galvanized iron
or some other metal. The answer to this would be that it is some
times necessary to put permangunate or other chemicals in the water
as a tonic for the fowls, and most of these chemicals act on the
galvanized iron to weaken the solution and eventually destroy the
metal. Another reason is that the cement keeps the water much cooler
than would the metal.

It is the duty of the poultryman each morning to clean out the
troughs by releasing the hook that holds down the valve, and raising
the valve and float out of the trough and with a small whisk-broom
sweep out all of the water and thoroughly scrub the trough, which is

The Western Poultry Guide 75

easily cleaned, there being no corners, and the inside surface being
smooth. Every week, or as often as is necessary, the troughs are
scalded out with boiling water. After the cleaning, the valve is again
hooked in place and fresh water fills the trough to the proper level.

I have used this system for two years with fifteen fountains in use,
supplying thirty pens, and find it to be very satisfactory, as I have
not had one case of contagious disease among my fowls. It is a good
plan to run water under pressure through all of the pipes, before
laying it, so that all of the scale and other particles may be washed out
of the pipe. If this is done there will be nothing to get under the seat
of the valves, and thus cause them to afterward leak.

76 The Western Poultry Guide

CHAPTER XII

ADVERTISING AND POULTRY SELLING

By Amos BuRHANS, Waterville, Minnesota

of a man and his work before the people. Most advertising
is constructive. Advertising can be destructive. The latter is
ANeda| grown from the seed the breeder germinates in the mind of
the buyer who is not well pleased with his purchase. When
you buy your first pen of good birds and let the neighbors know you
are championing them, your advertising commences. It never ceases
until the fatigue of memory overtakes those who have heard of your
birds and yourself. This is the reason that advertisers of years ago
are getting replies today for stock they are not now breeding.

Continuous advertising is the basic principle of publicity. Even if
your ads. read poorly, are too small, badly displayed, continuous ad-
vertising is going to do its work. It will not do its work so well as if
the ads. are changed often to make them seasonable, and the matter
properly worded to attract, but nevertheless it will pull. Just the
same idea is incorporated in the saying, “I can tell a man’s breeding
methods by his ads.,”’ as is contained in the old saw, “Show me a man’s
shipping coops and I’ll tell you what his flock looks like.”” To prove that
ene is alive he must keep doing live things.

Very few breeders of more than a year’s experience are not ac-
quainted with poultry journals. There are a few breeds of pure-
bred stuff that one reaches only through the farm papers but their
number is small compared to the army of readers who go to the poultry
press for the information they want about rearing and buying. The
poultry press is the one great medium through which the seller and the
Luyer are brought into touch. Every fancier who is reaching out for
more business should persistently use the poultry journals if he expects
to develop trade that will make his business grow. He should be an
ardent supporter of the journals in his own states and determine by
their returns on the investment he makes with them just how much
space he can profitably use. But he should remember that in some
instances it has been known to be profitable to increase advertising
to get better results and in others to cut down the space in order to
rnake the investment bear paying returns. One must judge from the
liveness of a journal—its contents, number of breeders represented,
the interest patrons take in it, its editorial matter, and general makeup
—all these and more, must be considered before a perfect judgment.

Y
3

The Western Poultry Guide

-1
|

can be formed of its value to the breeder. There may be something
wrong with the advertising, the way it tries to make an appeal,
its wording, its note of warmth or aloofness, that delays returns. The
principles are soon learned in the advertising game but the little
details that go to make up the finer points come only after serious
study and experience.

Farm journals are best used to sell incubator eggs and the cheaper
grade of stock, though of late years the best poultry journals have so
steadily persued large circulations that their own readers have afforded
a market for the same class of birds the buyers of farm journals de-
mand. In using farm journals it is best to give prices of birds offered
in the ads. These journals are the basis on which the forty variety
man banks his advertising. He sells cheaply, ordinary stuff fills the
bill in a good many instances and he knows that when he gets a reply
from a reader of a farm journal that they have a plot of ground to
rear chickens on and are really interested in starting. The big variety
breeder once gets a good farm journal name on his card index and he
never lets it get off without knowing that the intending buyer has
purchased elsewhere or else changed his mind, so persistent is the
follow-up. Even then, the name is kept for a folder or small bit of
advertising to be sent him later. Sales come from most unusual
sources and it is the business of every breeder to cultivate the un-
likely as well as likely spots that he may some day do business with
the man he is reaching.

Daily papers, country estate journals, classified advertising in the
magazines, these have all been used by poultrymen with varying suc-
cess. The breeder must determine for himself their availability.

Most breeders use a different box number in their address to know
where the inquiry comes from. Some of them have changed initial
in their name. They want to “key” their advertising and positively
know where the business is coming from.

It is a good idea to put this key on each card in the index so that at
the end of the season the casting up of accounts with the journals and
advertising mediums can be rightly computed.

One means of keeping before the reading public that is adopted by
the live-wire breeder is making notes of his work and building them up
into articles for the poultry journals and club catalogues. There can
be nothing of an advertising nature in the articles yet if there is meat
and food for thought in them they constitute a well-written advertise-
ment. Editors are always glad to get little hints about your solving
ot daily poultry yard problems as well as the longer material. A well-
written and exhaustive article in your club catalogue, the topic one
worth serious effort, will do much to place a breeder at the head of his
line. I know a breeder of Buff Wyandottes who has practically built
up his business on the strong articles he had published in the club
catalogues and journals, each one of them devoted solely to buff color
breeding.

78 The Western Poultry Guide

The idea is to make one’s name synonymous with the breed or vari-
ety and to so keep before the buying public that mention of the breed
will recall to mind the name or names behind it. When you think of
Barred Rocks certain names spring to mind involuntarily. They have
advertised themselves to that point where even the man who does not
breed Rocks recalls their names when the breed is spoken of. The race
is to the swift, strongly alive breeder who keeps before the people all
the time.

Advertising by means of coop banners in shows draws interested
persons who want interviews with the breeder if they are not blatantly
flaunted. Banners giving the idea that stock and eggs are so high in
price that the average breeder or beginner could not afford to buy of
you will do you little good. Two instances: Smaller exhibitors did a
lot of business at one of the great southern fairs after it was noised
about that a certain man in the class sold a breeding pen for a cool
thousand. There will always be timid buyers. Another breeder who
had won largely year after year at one of the big northern shows went
out and bought a banner that blew this fact into the ears of visitors.
His neighbor sold the most dollars worth of stuff at the show because
he was modest and pleasing in personal contact and did not flaunt any
high figures. As a rule high figures on winners are bad advertising.

In getting advertising at the shows go in to win first. Buyers like
io do their buying of a winner. Buy a bird or two to strengthen your
line-up if necessary. This is just what you can eventually expect others
to do of you when they need strength in their exhibits. Show records
are a basis for advertising. They will continue so until the system
changes radically from its present one. One of the best Red breeders
in America shows his birds at all the large and small shows he can
get the time to make displays at. It is through constant showing that
you perfect yourself in the art of training show birds and fitting them.
Remember, one cannot tell in what quarter business will be found. A
certain large eastern breeder made a small but select display at a
western show a few years ago and told me he sold more stuff at it
than any other exhibition he had ever attended. There was a large
idea in the novelty. A breeder who is known state wide could do the
same thing by going to the best county show in his state and repeating
the trick.

The cash advertising appropriation should be made with a view to
getting rid of the provable season’s product. If you have reared five
hundred birds and expect to sell four hundred of them as well as the-
old breeding stock you can plan on having to invest at least fifty cents
per bird in advertising if you are known only locally. I have been
pleased to spend one dollar each to sell three hundred head. This
included advertising, stamps, printing, catalogues, circulars, and all the-
little things except showing. One will have to make about a hundred
sales to sell this number. The higher priced birds bear the least.

The Western Poultry Guide (Be

expense each in the selling plan. This is especially true after you have
made one good class through winning.

If I were going to start with a new breed or variety today I would
put fifty dollars in getting out five hundred nine by twelve eight-page
catalogues, the paper to be hundred and twenty pound super-calandered
stock. I would put cuts and matter in it that would make it kept by
all who saw it. Then I would invest a hundred dollars in placing it in
as many hands as I could by connecting with them through the journals,
I might put another fifty with it to get the first edition out. If two-
thirds of them went out before the egg season, they would make enough
business to warrant a rather nice egg list with a record of the matings
and this I would put out with a catalogue to all the eggs-for-hatching
inquiries. The list of stock inquirers should be gone over also with the
egg list mailed to each of them. This is assuming that I started in
the spring with suficient breeders to give me about a hundred birds
in the fall.

My first space would be small. I should let folks know that I was
breeding stock of my hobby before I had anything to sell. I know the
labor of building up a trade and am speaking now from experience.
Early in the fall I should increase this space, beginning first display
advertising in my state poultry journals with probably a card in one
of the larger journals of national importance. The rate card of every
journal should be in my files. I would want to know about every
journal that showed signs of being alive. I should study the advertis-
ing of all the leading breeders and their literature. It would all help
me to climb the ladder of breeding and selling success.

If I happened to be successful in making some winnings the first
time out with my stock I should build upon them in my advertising.
The mere fact that John Jones or Sam Smith has a flock of such-and-
such and has made certain winnings, does not make a good ad. If I
was strong in certain particulars, I would let folks know it. If my
flock was founded exceptionally well, they should know that. I would
mention in detail what I had for sale, sexes, ages, its ripening time,
prices for certain quality breeding stock, and other little essentials.
I would word my ad. differently as possible from competition, give big
value for the money and never let up on hammering into the public
that I was a comer. !

A firm that made a big season’s sales told me once that their
sending to all breeders a series of plate-paper proofs of sketches of
their winners had a great deal to do with that year’s business. The
idea was that fanciers who got them would place them on the walls of
their homes because of the beauty of the prints, and the firm name
could not be erased easily from the memory of the recipients.

Another firm that is going big puts its faith into a big catalogue.
They havc the stock to back it up. They adhere to facts in show
records, dates and exact winnings and places. New territory is reached
by showing in new places, increasing the mailing list, bringing out new

0 The Western Poultry Guide

ideas and going just a little further in certain forms of unique adver-
tising than competitors. One breeder got started first by having a
small incubator maker insert his advertisement in the incubator cata-
logue. Incubator catalogues get into a lot of territory that the average
Lreeder overlooks. A certain firm, now out of business, made a busi-
ness of trying to get new advertisers to place advertising with them.
The firm declared it would put out thirty or fifty thousand circulars
and said they had room to get a breeder’s advertising thereon as they
could not fill the space. The inducements were many and the thing
looked good, but they never issued the circulars. Know the firm.
Many of them will carry no advertising other than their own.

After-season sales can generally be best planned and made to pay
by running through the card index and offering to delinquent inquirers
certain stock that has not moved fast, at reduced prices. The earlier
you cut the price of eggs-for-hatching in two after the spring rush the
greater will the business be. In working for advance orders it is well
to make a price inducement, shipping time inducement for eggs, or
give extra quality when possible. The addition of an extra female or
male in a fair-sized order has often brought in the order that hung
fire. The thing is to keep in touch with the buyer. Get him to write
as often as he will, asking the questions he cares to and which places
him under obligations. Be persistent. Hammer all the time. Think
out new wrinkles for each different customer who has an order worth
getting.

Some of the don’ts I might mention for ad. writers would choke
you with mirth, yet I have taken a list of them from advertisements,
each one picked out at the time it was seen because of its curiousness.
Here is a line from a full page advertisement that leaves the reader of
it further from the advertiser than before he read it: “Don’t fail to
read my catalogue containing matter on undertakings that no other
breeder has ever written.” If there is a single obscure idea or thought
in an advertisement that one thing kills it. It is so in the case I cite. Be
simple, lucid and trite in wording the advertisement. Have a certain
position in the journal and stay there year after year. This gives a
kusiness that permanent note so essential to growth. There is a breeder
on the rear outside cover of most of the big journals who changes his
advertisement every month. His advertisements are turned to regu-
larly by the breeders of that variety just for the sake of comparing
what he has to say this issue with what he said the month previous.
He is a live advertiser.

Nearly every breeder at a show is asked to increase his advertising
space in the journals or else begin advertising with each of those
which have representatives on the floor of the show room. The ad-
vertising solicitor is generally a bit prejudiced in favor of his journal.
But he is also full of advertising ideas that can be used to advantage.
The wise breeder learns all he can from the solicitor about the use
and display of space, the way others are getting business, and what is

The Western Poultry Guide 81

going on in the field. There is nothing conducive to more business
than pleasant personal relations with the advertising solicitor and
field man. Many times he is in shape to sell a bit of stock for you or
do you a turn that will head business your way. If you have the goods
and show him over your plant he is the best advertisement in the
world.

The advertising contract is merely a memorandum of the amount
ef space you will agree to use and the terms under which you buy it.
It can generally be terminated at the space buyer’s request. In fact, I
never heard of more than one that was not. The publisher knows that
he must have amicable personal relations with the advertiser if he is
to be steadily patronized by him. Use all the space that you can
afford. One never uses too much. Follow up the advertising in a
journal with mentions of your new advertising matter and cuts of
stock as often as you can consistently ask for their running. I know
of nothing better to boost for business than cuts.

LETTER WRITING, CATALOGUE BUILDING, AND ILLUSTRATIONS.

The letter of the breeder to the buyer reveals to the latter the very
personality of the man he is dealing with. The impressions a letter
makes on its recipient are hard to efface, whether they be good or bad.
The mail order businesses depend wholly on letter writing in some of
its forms to bolster up the business, tear it down or make it grow. It
may not matter how successful a breeder is in the show room or exhi-
bition hall, nor how attractive he may make prices, if he cannot write
a warm, feeling, personal letter, attractively setting forth the merits
of his stock, he will not stay in the business long. The appealing
business letter is honest in it’s sincerity, right to the point, neat, ac-
curate, not skimpy, unbragging, personal in a friendly acquaintance
that does not cross the line of familiarity, and couched in simple
grammar.

There was a breeder in the east, a producer of very good birds.
He wrote a voluminous letter yet throughout the whole page or pages
of it there was not a warm note. Chilliness prevailed and his mercenary
character stood out conspicuously. It is needless to say he is now out
of business. Another acquaintance writes a letter that does not
convince even himself and yet he has never thought how his wording
or getting up of a letter for his prospects would affect him if it came
from some one who was trying to sell him a bird. The letter that
appeals to you has a certain quality in it that goes to the human
nature spot and commands attention. No matter how good birds you
may have if you cannot convince a reader of your letter that they are
as good as you believe them you cannot make the sale. When I first
began poultry selling I kept the phrases of appeal that touched me.
These I clipped out of each letter and reread often. Common place
phrases such as: “Yours received of recent date”; “Your letter to

$2 The Western Poultry Guide

hand”; I am in receipt of yours of the, ete.” These phrases are good
ones to avoid. The last one always seemed to me to be condescending
to open what you may have written to the party who answered that
way. Broad generalities are also bad. If you are making the sale
of a single bird, go into detail about that bird. Give the head points,
shape of neck, back, tail, breast and color—detail is what the buyer
wants to know. If the bird is worth the money he will stand it. If
there are more than a pair or trio in the shipment, even a breeding
pen, describe each bird carefully. You may know they are right and
worth the money and more, but if you do not tell what you know
about them to the reader of your letter how is he to know?

Honesty, clarity, perfect description, simple terms, technical phrases
(such as hackle, cape, throat, all being sections of the neck and indi-
cative of a particular section of the neck), friendliness interest in the
customer, promptness, short sentences, spelling and neatness—these
are the foundations for the successful poultryman’s letter. When you
get a quick reply with an order you may know that you have told the
inquirer something that he particularly wanted to know about the bird
before he bought. The more detail you get into the letter the quicker
your correspondence is terminated and the time given to other
prospects.

Short sentences are generally clearest to the letter reader. They
impart vim to the letter. If you cannot master a typewriter yourself,
do as one breeder I know: Turn the machine over to a young member
cf the family and dictate the reply. With a little practice this is easily
handled. Get the letter out on a neat piece of stationery and if you
have a particularly good half-tone which you can get an artist to work
into a design for a letterhead this will greatly add to the letter’s
appeal. A design will not cost much. I have known one of the best,
artists to get out neat drawings for letters for five dollars. And it is
the attention to these little details that bring business. The name of
the farm, strain of birds, or your own name can be worked into the
design and the plate is good for a lifetime to have more matter printed
from it.

Ruled paper is good for letters written in longhand. Unruled for
typewriters is best. Have it of good quality and without a gloss finish.
Neat large or small envelopes to match give the letter a tasty appear-
ance. Novelties in the guise of letters are not business letters. They
detract the attention from the contents.

If your expected reply does not turn up within a fair length of
time a short follow-up letter, asking if you have overlooked anything
the buyer would like to know, is in order. Get out your carbon to his
inquiry and see if there is something you have forgotten to mention as
the buyer may think you have purposely done this. Do not make the
follower too long. Better have it short and timely.

Form letters are the best used when you are replying courteously
to a general inquiry. They can be written on the machine at spare

The Western Poultry Guide 83:

moments and having the appearance of genuine dictated letters are
kept. In them it is well to ask if there is something specially wanted,
stating that you are in exceptionally good shape to fill the orders for,
and inviting questions. It makes the recipient feel that you haye not
slammed a catalogue or mating list or circular into an envelope and
begrudgingly mailed it to him.

Circulars are generally six by nine, four or eight page affairs or
catalogettes. They are unpretentious, should be gotten out on good
paper stock, be well printed, and contain a rather shorter account of
your flock and strain and its history than a catalogue. Circulars are
abbreviated catalogues. The generalities of catalogue building can be
applied to them.

A general flock catalogue should be used to give the inquirer who
knocks at your door an idea of what you can supply him. It should
be a history of your strain of birds, contain all of your winnings, and
give in detail answers to all the questions which you will glean from
the letters that come to you asking for information. Keep a list of the
questions, making notes of them as they are taken from your inquiries
and answer them in the reading matter of your catalogue. It is.a
good idea to make the catalogue a sort of book on the breeding and
care of your hobbies. For a number of seasons before I issued a cata-
legue I read all those and preserved them that impressed me as
worthy. I had some ideas of my own that I was working out in the
breeding and rearing of my birds and jotted these down on slips of
paper which I placed on what I called my catalogue hook—where all
the ideas worth using in that brochure might be had when wanted.
One will gather good notes or schemes or phrases for wording certain
parts of his catalogue and mating lists from many sources. These
should be treasured until they are wanted. Ideas do not come
flooding to a man’s brain when he is drawing on it seriously for im-
mediate purposes. Thought tickles ideas from the gray matter, so
the scientists tell us.

In laying out a catalogue decide on the number of pages you want
to use. They should be in multiples of four. A twelve, sixteen or
twenty page catalogue with cover is generally a good starter. Twelve
pages of body and four of cover give sixteen pages that may be used to
display the merits of the stock. Ask a half dozen different printers who
make a specialty of poultry printing to give you dummies or blank cata-
logues of the size wanted, and their prices for printing. You should
use eight or ten point type for the body of the matter you will write to
go in it. One interview with a prmter who has done catalogue work
will make you fairly well acquainted with size of type, paper values
and a host of details. If you are in a city a few visits of this kind at
the smaller shops will put you in shape to talk to the bigger ones or
write an intelligent letter about what sort of work you want done.

I think that a nine by twelve inch page is the nicest catalogue size,
affording big display for extra fine cuts and making a nice type page

84 The Western Poultry Guide

when run two columns to the page. If you have decided on size—and
remember that a catalogue of the size I mention cuts with less waste
and costs less in proportion than another size—bind your body of
twelve or eight or sixteen pages together (common letterheads of this
size will do for your first dummy) and put outside a cover of manila.
I'irmly fasten the cover to the body. Number the pages. On the
cutside front cover should be the title. Give it the name of your farm,
strain, self or other display that you have decided upon. Remember
you are advertising birds rather than yourself. The address, farm
name, strain, and a modest cut are about all that is necessary. Inside
the front cover place the information most buyers want to know in
short, snappy sentences. Give the express offices you can ship by,
when and how you like visitors to your flock and plant, whether you
prepay charges on stock or eggs, the weight of single settings, doubles,
fifties and hundred lots, the weight of single birds cooped, pairs, trios,
pens, how you ship, feed and water, some of your best testimonials and
other items that have suggested themselves to you.

Page one can be used in introducing yourself and birds to those who
may not have heard of your show record, the utility value of your flock
and its history of founding and steady climb into the limelight. At the
top of this page it might be a nice thing to have a cut of your general
poultry farm and residence premises. This cultivates personal feeling,
or friendship, especially if the farm is attractive.

The next few pages can be best used to give the illustrations of your
winning birds and their breeding, what crosses of blood have given
you best results, testimonials and your breeding and rearing plans.
The more information that you can crowd into your catalogue about
successful breeding and rearing, the longer will that printed matter be
retained and reread. Looking through the best catalogues that come
to you will give you the ideas. They will stimulate others. If you are
pedigree breeding the details of your work will interest buyers. Should
you breed more than one variety better keep the page or pages devoted
to each free from matter of any other breed.

Your method of packing eggs for shipment, how well they have
arrived at their destination and hatched, with names and dates, gives
a wonderful strength to the egg trade. The success of your patrons
in the show room and what they have produced from matings you may
have sent them is also good material. Generally this can be had by
keeping in close touch with your clientele. Most of them will not object
ta its use, though it is best to ask them if you may use their
testimonials.

As you grow more and more into the advertising and publicity
work of the poultry breeding and selling business you will see the
advantages of a summer sale list to get rid of the breeding stock. [1
is not profitable to carry them over when you have an extra good Jof.
coming on.

The Western Poultry Guide 8d

Mating lists can be gotten up each spring and placed inside your
catalogues for the egg season. Refer to your card index and see if
vou have mailed a catalogue to the inquiring party before wasting one
by covering the same field twice. If he has been sent a catalogue let
the mating list with your additional winnings of the winter, if they
are not in the catalogue, go to the inquirer in a small envelope. The
mating list should give an accurate description of all the females in
your breeding pens as well as the males. The higher priced eggs you
expect to sell, the more will the buyer want to know about them.
Anything specially attractive should be dwelt upon.

Stock catalogues are best issued in the fall. I would send a new
catalogue of my general flock and farm and business methods to all
the inquirers who had asked for the previous one, though it is not wise
to send more than two catalogues and two mating lists to an inquirer
who has not patronized you. I have always noted, however, that as
soon as a new catalogue got into the hands of readers business picked
up splendidly. A correct method of keeping up the card index will tell
you where to place the new catalogue. Dwell on a new catalogue in
your advertising just as soon as issued. The buying of printing will
teach you that three thousand catalogues can be bought for nearly the
price of two thousand. If you are exhibiting at a state fair and work
persistently to pick out the interested people you can give away from
two to three hundred which will bear fruit. Keep their names and
addresses and index them, making note that they have had a catalogue.
Other things being right, you will be surprised to note the business
these will later bring into the office. Generally speaking the specialists
who do poultry printing will do you better work for the money than
general printers. Get them to bid on the work.

The more good photos and line drawings or retounched photos you
ean afford the better for your advertising. The up-to-the-hour fancier
has a camera which permits him to work on the ground glass, to
make pictures of his birds when they are in their prime. There is a
man in Iowa who built up a five thousand dollar lsarred business on
the strength of his photos. The history of poultry selling began to
expand when good illustrations entered the poultry journals and
leading breeders’ catalogues. One catchy photo will often lead to
many sales.

a i

‘, ry

: ai te

iret ay

in %
mel

re Fn
N es

Bi abe

ar

wn eae
7 tk i ‘ ae
; cae I eis ik vat : ie uN
ai ae Bate’ by By Rie wa Abin oy: wi
1 7 me Wao ,
hr sean Ree ie ‘ ie ea
A ay ie Pe i at - ald Wii fal f aie fe nay vs
ie net eet: ae ie
7 a ue ms ae an A a a ;
ee re bins; i ey
, hae) w "
_ Sst i ae
rae Aine 7 eee
Ble vi et he iC a
, a on : ae i a
: W ts ig Wie
Low h kang
ay

uy a ay
a ey Lee thy
mae te Mee f
ud) es i pay ¥. ie iy

By Misi y
ae Penalty em,

arias? tay

ie ie Scaae ie ay,
re a i pie fas i
' ei a ee are smheg “i ane a -
ey i os n i oo
Ai wy ai

i bri %
‘ y

hat Pr
at

le me ie A

CONTENTS

Page
AE PNY STE DST a Ea ll ME DS ed Ree UN PO See 5
In The Beginning
Charles McAlister
CLE UNTER SO 0 ge 2a S22 Ne SRY Pele l PD 8 A eee Sees OR mR PIAA eo 10
Comparison of the Breeds and Varieties
G. W. Grebe
(oo BL EU gio ON a eRe ER ROS WAAC SEL Ree Pee wer 18

Commercial Poultry Raising in the Northwest
Capt. A. Waldwick

OE LGUIPY STORE 2 08 SR Tee Cae Ee ten eee eR Cannons ce we SO 25
Progressive Poultry Culture—Houses and Feeding
J. H. Davis

ALTE NTRS ANON SSI SD! Sam oe nee tesa eRe eo fea Renee Bada ae
Incubation
H. F. Rau
QUST RUE VAG Sa lee POD ait Uae a ces Soe ane mee CPR =a! 37
Room Brooding and the Best Way to Start in the Poultry Business
D. Tancred
GOS TT ETN GO RRS Ee Bee Ree a een Eee ooze eA 45
From Eight-week Old Pullets to Eggs
I. D. Casey
DLT EY EEO] 2 6 a a tee ve oP ager ROE eee Rm ye Sec 48

The Market Man and the Poultry Man
C. G. Shawen

CLR UAT ETT UNDE 22 12, GSI ea RRSP ce ES MIE ta aD Pea Be 29 5A
Successful Poultry Ee coaen Sense and Fresh Air
B. S. Kennedy
RSs UMTS? OC SAS SISA SEDs eae ole nce me epee neti Tt Woe pA a 23 6

Poultry Diseases—Their Causes and Prevention
G. E. Conkey

CEU EM 1] A122 $C. CU i OR a ee ERE ct 2/ Ra 72
Sanitary Water Fountains
D. H. Gray
OSE STUER OGG SPR ae? We” SE IAS ps ee ee eee ee OR re et 76

Advertising and Poultry Selling
Amos Burhans

Wit ar y 4
eas Pole a 4

iy ye Le Ml
aes eet art, a
‘) Rae ery, { ; i, ak taht \ (ea aC se a
eae mye OTE, Wake Me Pha Lae Pray nh ey ity eg f
ae. F | r . I i 2 i ; J mut Ph) a) if
Pies 4 4 j
! ‘eh >
n
.
f .h