The new egg farm

Front matter

Chap........ Copyright No.

Shelf..L.^i'1

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

Contents

Chapter page

I Introductory ---.... i

II Location ----._.« 8

Chapter I. Introductory

During the last thirty years, farming has been divided into specialties. The history of modern industry shows that it is only through division of labor that the" precision and skill can be attained that become necessary as competition constantly grows keener. Improvements in methods, and the invention of labor-saving machinery, are sure to follow the establishment of an industry as a specialty. Sheep farms, farms for milk, others for butter, or cheese, small fruits, vegetable truck, etc., are not only common, but there is a further division — a gardener raising as a principal crop nothing but onions or celery, an orchardist nothing but peaches, and so on.

Eggs and poultry for the great cities are now produced in part by extensive establishments systematically conducted, instead of there being an entire dependence upon the old, haphazard way of a few on each farm. The production of eggs, rather than poultry meat, must always be the key to the poultry interest, because raisingpullets for layers brings so many supernumerary cocks, that these, with the fowls past their prime, always keep the dressed poultry side of the market better supplied than the egg department, and therefore special establishments for raising table poultry, winter chickens and ducks in the northern states excepted, will not, in the long run, be demanded.

2 AJS" EGG FARM.

a

Aii account of "the state of: the art," to date, of poultry raising as a separate branch of industry, should include, not merely the progress made, but a forecast of the future. It is only by comparing the present with twenty or thirty years ago, that the magnitude of the great revolutions in industrial affairs can be realized. In general, it may be said that the principal movements have not yet spent their force ; but great as the changes have been, they will, in the next few years, be vastly intensified. A generation ago a little of almost every principal article of food was raised on every farm, and all consumed within a few miles, comparatively, of where it was produced; while now food production has not only been divided into separate branches, but the main divisions have been split into an almost endless number of subdivisions, and articles are common on every table that have been carried thousands of miles ; this differentiation will go on further and with greater rapidity than has happened already.

The tendency of the times is to improve transportation, not only by the main railroads, but by the smaller lines and the common roads, a tendency which promotes the selection of the very best locality, as regards soil and climate, for carrying on any particular branch of food production. This choice of the best place, aided by the great modern development of cold storage, and the continually increasing facilities for transportation at reduced rates, will continue to augment the production of poultry in the South Central states, or what may be called the northern tier of the Southern states, and especially the region to the south, southeast and southwest of Kansas City, and enhance the imj^ortance of the extensive or colony plan of management best adapted to a mild climate, and which will be described in the following pages, and the intensive plan, pursued on a comparatively small plat of ground, will also receive due atten-

IXTRODUCTOBY. 3

tion, since it has, by the late invention of labor-saving machinery, been made more feasible than previously, while the art of artificial incubation has also been perfected. Modifications of both the intensive and extensive systems will be fully described to suit the varying needs of localities as diverse as those in our country of magnificent distances, while the false and unnatural plans which have ended in ruin during the twenty years that have seen the principal progress in poultry affairs, will be treated but briefly and as a warning.

In managing' animals of any kind, we must follow nature, for she will neither follow us nor be driven. The domestication of animals was only possible at the outset by proceeding ou a natural groundwork. To illustrate : Man domesticated dogs that, when wild, followed one of their own number as a leader, by installing himself as leader instead — so naturalists state — and the cat will never be domesticated in such a way as to follow her master when he changes his abode, because originally a solitary animal. Just so the domestication of fowls was effected by building upon an original foundation. In understanding the nature and needs of poultry, it will assist if we investigate the condition and habits of the wild parent stock in India, for the nature of all animals remains essentially the same for long periods. The transfer of our domesticated birds from forest to farm has affected their life and most important habits surprisingly little. The tame fowls have the same cries of warning to each other, and other language, that observers have found them to use in their native jungles ; they still hide their nests in some corner, just as if they were selecting a nook in a thicket ; and they are attached to the premises where they live, as they and all other gallinaceous birds are to some small district, when wild. The wild jungle fowl is by no means foreign to our subject ; and in attempting to manage poul-

4 AN EGG EAEM.

try by thousands, only a proper regard for original nature will prevent failure. According to this nature, they live during the breeding season in distinct families under polygamy. Each family group has, by tacit agreement, a part of the forest for its beat, and the exclusion of strangers of the same species secures privacy and tranquillity. They have their freedom, and in that word are comprehended the needful exercise, sun, pure air, shade, and varied diet.

Some plans upon a large scale have comprised small separate flocks without freedom, and others have embraced large flocks in freedom without separation; a third plan, and better than either of the foregoing, being to keep small flocks separately, yet in full freedom. Small flocks at liberty on distinct farms have been kept successfully during centuries, because the owners were unconsciously imitating the natural groups of the wild jungle fowls. . It has been found that when a flock of twenty, ill free range on the farm, gave a handsome profit, anil the number has been increased to hundreds, all in .onetflock, with the idea of correspondingly multiplying the gains, an unnatural mob has been formed, the hereditary instincts violated, and laying checked. The confusion has not, however, lessened the amount of feed consumed, and pecuniary results have been the wrong way. When it is attempted to divide the number, and place them in separate in closures, the results are still far from satisfactory. Small flocks kept- yarded may be multiplied on the same farm to any desired extent ; but their wants can be all supplied only through an amount of labor that eats up the profits, unless the mechanical apparatus we shall describe in the following pages is used, the invention of which was the most important step ever taken in poultry culture since fowls were first domesticated. In this land of high wages, the expense of attendance determines, to a great extent,

INTRODUCTORY. 5

the success of the whole project ; hence the importance of the new system of poultry keeping by machinery.

Keeping fowls as a business should be regarded as a species of manufacturing, grain being the principal raw material,, and eggs and poultry meat the finished products. The value of the products, of course, exceeds that of the raw material ; but if the labor cost is not carefully watched, it may eat up the difference. The menace which will always hang over the keeper of poultry on a large scale, is the competition of the ordinary farmers, villagers and suburban residents, who enter the market incidentally merely to dispose of surplus. Every owner of a small flock of fowls pours his little rill of poultry products into the great market stream anyhow, irrespective of profit, and this makes it hard for the big establishment. It is, in this respect, like farming, in which so many are working for a living that it is next to impossible for anybody else to farm on a large scale for money. Or it is like the instance of the girls behind counters in the large stores, who usually receive very small wages, in some cases not enough to pay for decent board, the reason being that there are so many girls wanting places who have nothing to do and who can board with their parents. The increase of the number of small flocks of fowls, consequent upon the diffusion of population in the suburbs by means of the trolley lines, adds to the difficulties of the large scale operator. The big plant cannot stand this sort of competition unless labor-saving contrivances are used.

This is a "machine-ridden" age. Industrial inventions have revolutionized society, yet the transformation is far from being complete. One man now performs the work formerly clone by fifty men, in making textile or metallic goods, or of thirty men in producing, milling and transporting bread stuffs ; but the mission of invention, as concerns feeding mankind, is far from perfect fulfillment. The raising of animal food is to be rastty improved. Crops have been cultivated cheaper, and yet cheaper, as year by year better agricultural implements and machinery have been devised, but in tending domestic animals, whether they are horses, cattle, sheep, swine or poultry, but little, comparatively, has been accomplished to diminish the amount of labor. Now it takes more time to tend the farm animals of the United States and care for their products — butter to be churned, wool to be sheared, steers to be fattened, colts to be broken and trained for sale, and so on — than it takes hours to raise the grain and forage these animals eat, harvest. the same and haul it to mow or granary ready for consumption. Here is a great field for labor-saving inventions, a field white for the harvest. Machinery must be used in doing chores. Where horses or cows are kept in considerable numbers in the same stable, mechanical appliances have already been employed by the writer to supply them with water, hay and grain, lessening the labor very materially, and a way has been found to clean horse stables by machinery. Sheep for fattening are now fed in immense numbers with grain by specially constructed feed hoppers ; milking machines are being perfected, and swine can be fed and tended, horses curried and brushed, and young horses have been broken and trained by the writer very satisfactorily indeed, no matter how incorrigible they were at the start, by the aid of machinery, at a great saving of time. The first outlay for almost every modern machine is much greater than was the cost of the old-fashioned hand tools it superseded. But the sum total of the cost involved by the time the machine is worn out doing good, is less under the machine system than it was under the hand tool system sixty years ago. Otherwise, modern machinery would not be labor saving. The reaper and binder does the work of a file of men with cradles,

INTRODUCTORY.

and another file to rake and bind. The price of the ponderous thing is greater than what cradles and rakes would cost. The farmer pays his harvesting bills for eight or ten years in advance when he buys a reapingmachine that will lust that length of time ; that is, he hires fewer harvest hands for eight or ten years. His grain is cut, virtually, before it is sown. It is cut in a machine shop one thousand miles away; the reapers wear aprons and paper caps, and work cutting the farmer's grain in a factory he never sees; their wages are higher per diem than what cradlers would get, but his harvesting costs him less the new way, or there would be no labor saving about it. Just so in the new system of poultry keeping by machinery; there is the mechanic's bill at the outset. The machines will last many years ; those which are indoors will last during the poultry man's lifetime. If the wages of the mechanics who construct them, including interest, amount to less than the wages of employes saved or superseded during the twenty or fifty years the apparatus lasts, interest on the wages included, then there is labor saving. Xow, in any line of industry, no good machinery, well adapted to accomplish the work for which it was designed, ever yet failed to save labor, and the poultry machinery described in this book saves a greater per cent of labor than does the average farm machinery.

Chapter II. Locatiox

A location near a city secures certain important advantages. An article produced daily the year through, and which is prized for being fresh, should be raised as close to a market as possible. Thus the highest prices may be obtained, the special aim being to supply the demand for better eggs than any can be that are packed and sent great distances. Under the system which now supplies, to a great extent, northern cities, there is the time spent in collecting eggs from various sources, to wdiich must be added the time for transportation, and the time they are in the dealer's hands after arrival. Then the jarring is more or less injurious, and after it, eggs will keep but a little while. They pass through so many hands that no one in particular is responsible for the character of the article. Under a better plan, eggs are delivered directly to consumers, families being visited regularly once a week. The egg route has this advantage over a milk route, that it need not be traversed so often, only a sixth of the whole being traveled daily ; thus the expense of delivery is not great. As a team must be sent to town every day to collect stale bread from the bakeries, waste bits from the meat markets, etc., eggs can be sent, when only a clay or two laid, with no extra trouble. If disposed of at stores, an arrangement should be made with the dealer whereby they may be kept in a separate lot, and sold under the name of the producer. Consumers readily appreciate eggs, butter or other produce that comes from a regular, responsible source.

LOCATION". 9

When a lot is mixed with lots from other farms, its individuality is lost ; if good, it may only be helping to sell the poor article of somebody else, and the producer does not reap the benefits of his pains in increased custom. ISTo produce can be supplied to city dwellers to better mutual advantage to seller and buyer, than new laid eggs delivered direct, the dubious ones in the market causing much loss and vexation.

Poultry farms, at the west, have the benefits of cheap land and cheap grain ; and at the south the season is earlier, and on the Atlantic coast, especially, cheap transportation by water is available. But the value of manure in some places at the north is so great, that it is more economical to bring grain here from the west than eggs, the latter being so troublesome to send by rail. Butchers' waste, procured fresh, being almost absolutely necessary, is an important consideration in favor of proximity to a city. When it is seen that high prices for eggs depend on the latter being produced near by and delivered fresh, and that the labor is no greater to raise them close by the market than at a distance at lower prices, with a deduction for transportation and breakage, it will be readily seen that there are certain special advantages in a location near a big northern city.

The site should not be far from a railroad freight depot or wharf. The amount of western grain needed is large. Hauling this many miles by team is too costly. Enriching wornout northern farms by feeding out grain from the prairies, is an indirect way of importing their rich mold. Therefore, we take care that this importation is judiciously contrived. A mill near by, for grinding, is desirable. A tract of arable land may be found (though rarely), surrounded on all sides by either woods, swamps or rocky pastures, so that there need be no danger that the fowls will stray into tilled fields of adjoining proprietors. In case such a farm could be procured, the great expense of a fowhproof fence all around it would be saved. If the tract is unfortunately bounded by cultivated lands, then it must be so large and of such cheap quality, that a border twenty or thirty rods wide may be afforded, to be kept in permanent pasture. The land should be upon a slope, for there must be a quick surface drainage after heavy rains ; but the pitch should not be so steep as to prevent easy wagoning. A southern or southeastern inclination gives a proper sunny exposure; and if there is a belt of woods on the north to break the winds, so much the better. If near swamps, sea marshes or damp river valleys, the site should be so elevated as to be out of the reach of the worst raw, chillingfogs. We have enumerated all the above qualifications as necessary to a site for an egg farm, and it may be added that most of these apply whether the plant is in the northern or the southern states. Their combination with certain essentials of soil, which we shall state in another place, makes the matter of selection one of considerable difficulty. Many more important points are to be attended to than in choosing a place for ordinary farming or gardening.

A SOUTHERN LOCATION".

While proximity to a northern city has become more important year by year, in one sense, because a greater proportion of the whole population of our country, and of all other countries as well, is, as time rolls on, found in the large towns ; yet there is, however, another aspect to the case; for transportation has received such an immense development that it is possible to utilize extremely favorable distant sites, formerly unavailable, for poultry raising. By going a tier or two of states further south from our northern farms, poultry plants may be established under more favorable auspices, in many respects, for supplying the large northern cities,

LOCATION. 11

than can be afforded by sites near at hand. Just as early fruits and vegetables have, within a few years, comparatively, been raised in prodigious quantities at the south for shipment to New York, Boston, Chicago and other northern markets, under a regular organized system of gigantic proportions, we may look, in a short time, for something on a correspondingly large scale in the movements of poultry products. By seeking a milder climate, the construction of expensive winter shelters and the cost of fuel for warming them and carrying on artificial hatching and rearing, may be avoided.

The climate of the G-ulf states, and of all the extreme south, will never be as favorable for poultry as the region of the latitude of North Carolina or southern Kansas. The high trans-Missouri plains, owing to the prevailing dryness and great purity of the air, afford the best sites for poultry farms in the whole country, the southern portion of this great area being the best. In. all the region from the Dakotas to northern Texas, fowls of all kinds thrive amazingly. It is easier to raise a forty-five pound turkey in Nebraska than a thirty-five pound turkey in New England, from the same strain. Southern Kansas and vicinity, where winters are less severe than further north, lessening expense, as population increases in the cities of the northeast and of the extreme south, where the climate is unfavorable for poultry, and as railroad lilies are multiplied, running north and south between British America and the Texas Gulf coast, will become the best locality in the United States and in the world for the raising of poultry products in prodigious quantities. Grain is cheaper in this region than in any other, and is likely to remain so for a long time.

Unless the proportion of freight rates should be materially altered, which is unlikely, it will continue to cost less to transport eggs and fowls from this region of cheap corn to points where both corn and poultry products are comparatively dear, than to ship to the latter vicinity the grain from which these products are formed. Seventy years ago nearly every pound of provisions in the whole land was consumed within twenty miles of where it was raised; but now, since "many run to and fro, and knowledge is increased," there is a growing tendency toward shipments to great distances. It is common for the market to contain food supplies, the principal articles of which are from various localities a thousand or two thousand miles apart, while some are from even the most distant parts of the globe. A natural law of competition, as persistent as the attraction of gravitation, compels the production of commodities where the facilities are the best, unless the freight to the point of consumption is great enough to offset these.facilities. But freight rates grow less and less as the machinery of transportation, like all other machinery, is constantly improved.

In treating of a location near a northern city, the advantages of delivering fresh eggs at an extra price direct to the consumers, without the intervention of a middleman, were set forth. A portion of the whole number of large scale poultry men will continue to avail themselves of these advantages, yet the tendency will be, in the future, for the production of a great and increasing proportion of eggs and poultry meat at points hundreds of miles distant from the consumers. The science of distribution — if it may be so called — has been constantly improving, the machinery of the produce commission business having been brought to a great pitch of perfection. Even the multiplication of department stores, which marks an important era in the distribution of commodities, has a bearing on our subject. As the retail food market division of one of these great

LOCATION. 13

establishments is handy, the housewife can personally inspect her purchases, which she would probably not do if it was not made so very convenient for her in connection with her shopping in other lines, while facilities of electric cars and horseless omnibuses are constantly improving, so that communication is easy and quick between the department store and the home of the cus-' tomer. The tendency of all inventions is to mass production at a few points remote from consumption, hence many poultry operators will, in the future, be diverted from a suburban region of high priced lands to a locality of cheaper acres and a more favorable climate.

Transportation is king and governs every department of industry. In the case we are considering, not only has improved transportation rendered distant sites feasible, but it has, through the means of trolley lines, checked, to some extent, the great increase of city homes, and by stimulating out-of-town residence, has added to the numbers of suburban people who raise eggs for their own families, with a surplus to take to the city. In other words, they leave the ranks of buyers of poultry products and become producers themselves, thus adding to the supply of near by raised strictly fresh eggs.

The production of eggs at a point remote from the large city market has also been made more feasible than formerly by the recent improvements in cold storage. It is true that nothing will ever quite equal a newly laid egg, but eggs absolutely newly laid when put into cold storage, will, the following winter, turn out to be very good indeed, even if not "fresh laid," and will meet a great demand at high prices. Eggs collected from ordinary farms by itinerant hucksters, or accumulated indiscriminately at grocery stores and then taken to cold storage, will always be more or less in bad repute. Hence the advantage possessed by the proprietor of a poultry farm on a large scale, where every nest is visited daily, on system, and freshness of product guaranteed absolutely before put in cold storage.

The cold storage feature will, in the future, dominate in fixing the areas for the production of a large and increasing proportion of the enormous quantities of poultry products which our hundreds of millions of people yet to be will consume. The great packing houses for beef and pork at the principal cities of the middle west have grown with wonderful rapidity to a colossal size, pointing out the belt of country where animal food can be produced at the greatest advantage. Dressed poultry is already kept and transported from the trans- Mississippi region on an immense scale, by the same means as beef and pork, in the carcass, besides beingcanned, the principal operators being at Kansas City ; but all that has been done, thus far, in this line is but as a drop in the bucket. The big eastern and northern cities will be supplied more and more in the future with poultry products from the southwest ; particularly from southern Kansas, northern Texas, southern Missouri, Oklahoma, Indian Territory and Arkansas, although southeastern Nebraska, southwestern Iowa, and all of the area tributary to Kansas City will contribute to the immense volume of eggs and poultry which that great southwestern paradise of fowls will produce.

THE KIND OF SOIL.

The soil should be adapted to cultivation. Those who advocate a waste or sterile tract make a great mistake. Every rood should be capable of cultivation, and rocky or bushy land avoided. Shade may be artificially provided at a small cost in a manner to be hereafter described. It is necessary to raise crops, in order to get the full advantage of the manure. It exceeds in value that made by any other domestic animal, because it is from rich food more thoroughly digested than is the

LOCATION. 15

case with quadrupeds. The scrapings from the roosts might be carried to another farm, it is true, but the nearer they are applied^ the less labor; and the droppings where the fowls range, and at every coop of small chickens, etc., are too valuable to be lost, and cannot be gathered up save by the roots of plants on the spot. In order to distract attention from the main business as little as possible, crops of the simplest management should be mostly grown, and only those that can be consumed by the establishment — grass, clover, alfalfa, cabbages, lettuce, onions, potatoes, beets and other roots, large quantities of oat or rye straw, and the balance, grains of various sorts, corn especially being always in order. The principle of division of labor, carried out to full extent, would forbid our raising crops at all, were we able to gather all the manure and sell it for what it is really worth. But, as we have seen, much will be wasted unless there is tillage, and there is no price established for such manure ; and if there were it is, under our system, all immediately mixed with earth, making it unfit for sale.

The quality of the soil may be poor, or worn-out at the start, thus securing cheapness ; but it should be of a sort to which it would pay to apply valuable manure. For the sake of the health of the birds, choose a warm, dry soil. Land which dries quickly after rains is the kind ; and another test is, whether it is ready for the plow early in spring. If it will produce peas or watermelons earlier than common, Ave are not far wrong. It should not be clayey or gravelly, but a sandy loam. Gravel for a subsoil, low enough down never to be reached by the plow, would be excellent, making a natural underdrainage ; but gravel at the surface troubles the fowls In their rolling and dusting. A supply of hard gravel for the use of the birds should be screened to a proper size at some other place, and hauled to the spot, and put in boxes for the use of the birds. The soil should answer for dry earth for the roosts and for dust baths, the loam being of a sort easily reduced to an impalpable powder. This is important, because we depend upon pulverized dry earth all through the business, to secure the cleanliness and health of the birds with the least possible labor. A great deal is said in poultry books and papers about the importance of cleaning the roosts frequently. We do not clean ours oftener than once in three or four months. The labor of going the rounds daily in a large establishment, thoroughly scraping floors, and removing manure, would be enormous. We set all our fowl houses on a ridge of earth, thrown up by plowing several times toward the center, and surround with a shallow ditch for surface drainage after heavy rains. Thus we secure dryness, wet being the foe that must be kept from the fowls at every stage. Then in winter a bed of dry earth, six inches deep, is put inside the houses instead of a floor, and a couple of inches added monthly if needed. The birds may be depended upon to cover their own droppings, not only daily, but hourly, when not at roost, a thick cloud of dust being raised every little while. The houses will always be freer from taint than if floors were used without dry earth, and scrubbed with soap and sand three times a day.