Side line poultry keeping : "two dollars a day from poultry and eggs", revised and improved

Front matter

SIDE LINE POULTRY KEEPING

BY EDGAR WARREIV

PRICE FIFTY CENTS

CHAPTER I. Side-Line Poultry Keeping

This book is rewritten to meet the needs of those who wish to keep poultry as a side line. So far as the author knows it occupies a field peculiarly its own. Many books have been written about poultry keeping the past few years, and many articles have appeared in the papers on the subject, but the books and articles have been written either to give the general principles underlying poultry culture, to exploit some "system" or to describe some mammoth plant in which the writer or advertiser is interested. The man who wishes to keep hens as a side line, to add a few hundred dollars a year to his income or to reduce family expenses has been neglected.

Side line poultry keeping is destined to assume vast prominence in the future. There are two great movements in progress in the industrial world: the first is the movement to shorten the hours of labor; the second is the tendency of everything we buy to increase in price. The mechanic receives good wages and works short hours, but he can hardly support his family, to say nothing of laying up something for a rainy day. If he is to get ahead, if he is to have a bank account, if he is e^'er to own a home, he must have some side line to occupy his spare hours and add to his monthly income.

The side line poultry keeper has certain great advantages. He does not take the chances the man takes who gives up his regular work to engage in the poultry business. His trade or occupation will give him a living while he is learning. He can begin small and grow. Then he has a market. The side-line poultry keeper is generally located in a city or large country village, and has customers at his doors. He takes every profit. He gets the whole of the consumer's dollar. Not so the man who is back on the farm. He sells to the grocer, who in turn sells to the commission merchant, who sells to the retail dealer, who sells to the consumer. At least three profits are sacrificed. The side liner can make his hens pay him at least a dollar more a head a year than can the man hack on the farm.

According to the census of 1910 there were 91,972,266 people in the continental United States, and of these 42,623,383 lived in urban and 49,348,883 in rural territory. Town-folk made up 46.3 per cent and country folk 53.7 per cent of our people. In 1900 the two elements stood at 40.5 and 59.5 per cent, respectively. Seven-tenths of our total gain in the decade from 1900 to 1910 went to urban territory ; in other words, consumers are increasing more than twice as fast as producers.

Such being the case, the city must produce some of its own food or go hungry. Within the five-cent carfare zone of niany of our cities there are houses with land that can be rented for less than a man would have to pay for far less desirable quarters in the congested district. What a blessing it would be to many a clerk or mechanic to move back a few miles from City Hall and rent one of these places ! A\'ith his garden and small fruits and a good flock of hens he could easily pay his rent and lay up something besides. The productive years in a man's life are few at best, and unless he makes the most of them he faces an old age of penury and want.

A CASE IN POINT— MR. F. H. DUNLAP OF WEST

SALISBURY, N. H., CLEARED $1,188.05 FROM

POULTRY AND EGGS IN 1910.

Up among the hills of New Hampshire, in the little town of Salisbury, one hundred miles from the metropolis of New England, lives a man whom I greatly admire and respect. Big hearted, broad minded, breezy and optimistic, he is a good type of the men who are making this country great. Conducting the village store and postofUce, with not more than two hours a day on an average to devote to outside affairs, he has developed a poultr}' business which netted him $1,188.05 profit in 1910.

There were three sons in his father's family, and it was quite a question which one should stay at home to look after the old folks and carry on the father's business. The lot finally fell to Frank. He took his place behind the counter, married and settled down, and became a permanent fixture in the little village where he was born and passed his boyhood days.

The young man was soon confronted by a serious problem, and that was how to get ahead in the world. The profits of the store were just about enough to support his family, but not enough to enable him to lay by anything. So he began to set his mind to work to devise means by which he might add to his income.

The story of the way in which he was led to take up poultry keeping as a side line is most interesting and amusing. One morning after he returned home from the city where he had been employed he was making a tour of the premises and for some reason or other went down into the barn basement. As he opened the door he was set upon by about twenty gaunt and eager hens, which, as he expressed it, seemed hungry enough to eat him up. Returning to the house, he asked his mother who fed the hens. She said, "I don't know ; your father, I suppose." Hunting up his father, he put to him the same question. "Fred does, I guess," said his father. Hunting up his brother, he asked. "Fred have you fed the hens?" "Well, no. not to-day; I fed them yesterday, or day before, I forget which." "That settles it," said Frank. "I will feed them myself." So he got some grain, gave the hens a breakfast, rinsed out the water dish and gave them fresh, clean water to drink, and in this way "adopted" the homeflock of ])oultry as his part of the family chores. He ke]it an account of the grain, meal, etc.. which he used in feediing them, fed them what he felt was a good ration, and in two weeks' time those hens, which before had been laying scarcely an egg a day, were turning out a dozen eggs a day, and at the price his father allowed him for them at the store he could see better than a hundred per cent profit in those dozen eggs a day.

THE POULTRY PLANT.

Mr. Dunlap's plant, as it exists to-day, is an expansion from that small begininng. It is not a large plant, two and one-half acres of sandy land shaped like a capital L. On what might be called the base or foot of the L are the dwelling house and stable, a small lawn and garden, and the laying houses. On the shaft or stem of the L are eight chicken houses, each 8x 12 feet, situated one ahead of the other until the whole shaft is filled. I visited the plant in November, 1902, and again in August, 1911, and found that the plant had not grown in the meantime. There are two reasons for this : 1. The difficulty in getting more land; for, strange to say, in the country it is often impossible to induce the owner of a piece of land to sell. 2. The fact that the plant as it exists now is about all Mr. Dunlap can handle in the limited time at his command.

The poultry houses are good, substantial buildings, but not costly or elaborate. The eight chicken houses are each 8x12 feet, eight feet high in front and five feet at the back, with a lean-to shed roof. , They are built of hemlock boards, covered with roofing fabric or half-inch hemlock sheathing; the roofs are shingled. All these houses have board floors, eighteen inches from the ground, and the chicks run under these houses in the summer.

There are five laying houses on the plant, three 30x12, one 60x12, and one 44x14. These houses are divided into pens ten feet wide, and in the winter accommodate about 500 head of laying stock. Two of these laying houses are twostory affairs, the upper stories being utilized for setting hens in spring. The houses have cement floors. They are not model houses in any way, but just plain, serviceable houses such as have grown out of the builder's needs.

THE LAYING STOCK.

Mr. Dunlap aims to winter five hundred head of laying stock — four hundred pullets and one hundred year-old hens. These are kept in flocks of twenty-five each. The majority of the birds are Rhode Island Reds, although there are a few White Leghorns. There are also crosses of the two breeds.

METHOD OF FEEDING.

Mr. Dunlap has developed a method of feeding, highly original and exceedingly effective. Where one wants a large egg output and is willing to put in a little extra time for the sake of getting it, no better method could be adopted. It is an economical method in all but time, the feed-bills being only about two-thirds what they would be under a different system.

Mr. Dunlap sticks to the wet mash. Every morning in the year his hens are fed a warm mash, mixed up the night before and so compounded that when fed it is moist and crumbly, but not sloppy. In the chapter on "The Laying Stock" I say that one of the fundamental things in feedinghens is to give them variety. Mr. Dunlap believes in this. He has four combinations, which he feeds on consecutive days, and which I will describe, designating each day by the leading ingredient in the combination.

Boiled Potato Day. — Boiled potatoes, one peck ; gluten, four quarts. The potatoes are boiled the night before ; the o-luten is added after the potatoes are l:)oiled ; the mass is allowed to stand on the stove over night.

In the morning add two quarts bran, two quarts "provender" (cracked corn and oats), three pints of beef scrap or animal meal.

Steamed Clover Day. — Take a peck of second-crop clover hay, chopped fine, pour on boiling water and let it stand in a covered kettle over night. In the morning add bran, provender and beef scraps as on "Boiled Potato Day."

Waste Bread Day. — Mr. Dunlap buys waste bread by the barrel, having it shipped u]) from Boston. This is soaked over night in boiling water, and in the morning bran, provender and beef scraps are added as before.

Oats and Gluten Day. — Soak eight quarts of oats in boiling water ; pour off some of the water and add two quarts gluten ; mix them well together and let stand in covered kettle over night. In the morning add the same combination as on other days.

Salt is added to all these combinations in limited amount, except when waste bread is fed. This contains a small amount of salt which was put in before it was baked.

In giving the formulas I have been careful about preparation rather than to give the exact amount to feed to a gi\'en number of hens. The reader will have to learn how much his hens need by experience ; they will need more on some days than on others. Feed all the mash they will eat up clean in from fifteen to twenty minutes. Never leave any uneaten mash in the dishes to sour.

In the moulting season Mr. Dunlap frequently adds a quart of linseed meal to the combination, to promote the growth of feathers.

Besides the morning mash Mr. Dunlap keeps a hopper of dry feed in each pen all the time, so that the biddies can help themselves. The combination is as follows : Two quarts alfalfa; two quarts bran; two quarts "provender" (cracked corn and oats) ; one quart chopped clover ; one quart middlings ; one and one-half quarts beef scraps or boiled beef and bone ; a little salt; a little charcoal.

If the hens are laying heavily and growing light, add tw^o quarts corn meal to tlie drv feed.

The greater part of the day Mr. Dunlap is employed at his store, which is about a hundred yards from his place, so that it is necessary for him to economize in time in every way. As a matter of fact he does not have more than two hours a day on the average to devote to his fowls ; if he gets more he has to take it out of the night. There are certain seasons of the year when he has to work by lantern light long after everyone ■else in the little village has gone to sleep. He has an hour at noon in which to eat his dinner, feed and water the hens, •collect the eggs and do any little chore about the houses that must be done. In this noon hour Mr. Dunlap gives his hens their grain for the day. He selects the grain that he thinks will balance the ration fed in the morning and throws down enough to keep the hens scratching in the deep litter a good part of the afternoon. Boiled Potato Day he feeds oats, wheat, cracked corn or l:»arley, sometimes separately, somelimes in combination. Steamed Clover Day he feeds cracked corn ; Waste Bread Day, wheat ; Oats and Gluten Day, barley or buckwheat.

Every fall Mr. Dunlap swaps one hundred bushels of hen manure for one hundred bushels of turnips, and this gives him his yearly supply of green food without any money cost. These turnips are cut through the middle, the two halves thrown on the Hoor of the pen, where the hens find them and •devour them greedily.

Upon referring to the figures which Mr. Dunlap gives us ifor 1910 it will be seen that he paid out for feed during the year $86.45. This is exceedingly small, when you reflect that he sometimes has five hundred head of laying stock and a tlKHisand chicks on hand. Mr. Dunlap keeps down his feed liills in scNcral ways. He buys in ton lots, and gets the dis- 'count. He mixes up everything himself, and does not pay a poultry sales house to do it for him. He utilizes waste mate- :rial as far as possible and turns his Yankee shrewdness in trade to good account. Thus his green feed does not cost 'him a penny : the clover hay he cuts himself ; the boiled potatoes are small unmarketable potatoes which can be bought for a few cents a bushel. In other words, he makes everything tell.

REARING THE CHICKS.

Limitations of space forbid me to enter into detail about tliis part of Mr. Dunlap's work. Like everything he does, his method of rearing the chicks is original and instructive. He hatches under hens and broods in brooders. In my mention •of his laying stock I said that he aimed to winter five hundred head — four hundred pullets and one hundred yearling hens. The eggs for hatching come from the year-old hens — Mr. Dunlap believes that one gets stronger chicks in this way. Tullets are employed for sitters. "The meanest part of my work," says Mr. Dunlap, "is taking the chicks away from the mothers. I feel ashamed to look a hen in the face." He believes that it does a hen good to hatch a brood of chicks; she will lay all the better for the rest and change. Two brooders are installed in each of the eight small houses I have described, and each brooder is filled with chicks. "I aim to put fifty in a batch," says Mr. Dunlap, ''but often T am obliged to put in from sixty to eighty." The chicks are fed on chick feed at first, but after a few weeks are fed much the same as the hens. The yards where they are confined are as bare of grass as a bald-headed man's pate is of hair. Mr. Dunlap is obliged to cut grass and throw it into the }ards for green feed.

"Are you ever troubled with white diarrhoea?"

"Sometimes — I don't know any poultryman that isn't.''

"What do you do for it?''

"I use ammoniated citrate of iron, which I Iniy at the drug •store. I put a quarter of a teaspoonful in a quart of water — •enough to turn the water quite red- — and let them take their •own medicine. I keep this up a week or ten days, making the ■solution weaker as the chicks get o\'er their trouble."

MARKETIN'G THE PRODUCT.

On account of his location, so remote from a big city, Mr. Dunlap is at a great disadvantage in marketing his product. He ships to Boston, selling to commission merchants there. He ships in 49-dozen egg cases and ships every day. The ■stage takes the case from his store to North Boscowan, and the express takes it there. It costs him 20 cents a case to get the eggs to Boston, and there is the commission to be de- •ducted besides. Mr. Dunlap does not get fancy prices for his eggs. Fifty cents in winter is the top price, and they go as low as eighteen cents in the spring. "If I were near a good market," he says, 'T could make at least one-third more every year than I do."

Besisdes his remoteness from market Mr. Dunla'p has to contend with the rigorous winters of Central New Hampshire. "1 have seen the houses so covered with snow that I could barely discern their outlines. In one big storm all I could see was the roofs. It took me from 7 o'clock in the morning until 1 o'clock in the afternoon to shovel paths and get the hens fed. 'Confound the poultrv business! it's too strenuous for me,' I thought. But that day I took ten dollars and seventy-five cents' worth of eggs out of the houses, and the feed cost just an even two dollars.''

"When 1 was here before, in 1902, you sold your fowls alive. Do you do so now?"

''No; I have a better way. I pay a man eight cents a head to come to the house and get the fowls, take them home, kill and dress them, ship them to Boston and sell them to commission merchants there. All I have to do is to furnish the fowls and take the check."

"You think it better to kill and dress than to ship alive?"

"I do. There is quite a shrinkage in weight on live fowls. Then the commission men will write you that they found one or two dead in each crate. It's a lie ; but you can't prove it. I get five cents a pound more on an average on each fowl, and the express rate is less. The gain is about twenty-five cents a bird."

Mr. Dunlap very kindly drew up for me a balance sheet of his business for 1910. The figures are so inspiring and instructi\e that I reproduce them here: Poultry in account with

F. H. Dunlap.

Debtor.

Jan. 1 To 570 birds on hand @ 75c $ 427.50

Oct. 1 To cash paid for breeding stock 23.00'

Dec. 31 To cash paid for feed for year 867.45

Dec. 31 By 625 birds on hand (a) 75c $ 468.75

Dec. 31 By 65,020 eggs laid during year 1,621.91

Dec. 31 By poultrv sold during year 415.34 n

Profit per week $22.85

Profit per day $3.25

Xo account is made for fowls consumed on the home table.

THE BALANCE SHEET OF THE YEARS.

Mr. Dunlap l^egan his experiment with hens in 1886. and began in a very small way. It took him six or eight years to get his plant to its present size, and he has not attempted to increase it. But each year he makes it pay a little more. He took up poultry keeping as a means of getting something ahead. And in this he has been eminently successful. The profits for the twenty-five years have been $13,400.41. In other words, he is $13,400.41 better off than he would have been if he had not made the experiment. Out of the profits of his flock he has bought his land, erected his poultrv buildings, built a fine house and stable, installed a water system, bought a horse, wagon, sleigh and harness, made necessary repairs; and should have a surplus of $7,255.41 wisely invested, as no doubt he has. Besides the financial returns poultry keeping has given him a new interest in life, has made him many pleasant acquaintances and friends, and has given him quite a renown. It certainl}' has paid.

MR. R. A. RICHARDSON, A SHOE CUTTER IN HAVER- HILL. MASS.. LAID BY $1,009.31 IN 1910 FROM HIS HENS.

I could go on and cite instance after instance where men are making good money on the side with their hens, but I have not space to do so. Nor is it necessary. Two or three examples are as good as a thousand. Mr. Dunlap is an illustration of what a man way back in the country can do. I am now going to show the possibilities of a city lot.

Mr. R. A. Richardson is a shoe cutter in Haverhill, Mass., a city of about forty thousand inhabitants, situated on the banks of the rolling Merrimac. He has been interested in poultry for many years and when he was younger bred show specimens.

Twelve years ago Mr. Richardson began to think seriously about the future. He was married and had a little family, and had nothing to support them but his earnings at the shoe bench. Shoe manufacturing is a peculiar business. Twice a year the shops shut down for several weeks, or run with a reduced force, and although a shoe cutter makes good wages when he works, there is much lost time. Suppose sickness should come, or accident, what would happen? What would iDecome of him and his family when he was too old to work? for in shoe factories young men are given the preference. Mr. Richardson saw but one chance for himself, and that was to take up a side line. But what should it be? He had no capital and no credit; literally, not a dollar in the world.

His thoughts turned to the poultry business, with which he had some acquaintance. He could start in that with very little capital. Mr. Richardson had visited the shows and he knew that many people were interested in fancy poultry. He had read of the prices paid for exhibition stock. He reasoned out that for him there was a better field in utility than in exhibition stock; for ten persons are interested in utility stock to one who is interested in show specimens.

Mr. Richardson started out with the ambition to produce the greatest strain of layers in the world, and settled upon the White Wyandotte as the bird best adapted to his purpose. The White Wyandotte lays a brown egg, and a brown egg is called for in the Boston market. The White Wyandotte has a large breast development, which makes it an ideal bird for a broiler. It is larger than the Leghorn and makes better poultry. It seemed to combine all the good qualities more than any other breed.

Mr. Richardson reasoned out that the only way to get great laA^ers was to breed from great layers, and he installed trap nests and kept the record of every hen. This he could not possibly have done without the assistance of his wife. "She is as interested in the business as I am," said Mr. Richardson to the writer. AVhile he stood at the bench day after day cutting out soles and uppers, his wife was busy with the birds, and every time a hen laid an egg she was given credit for it in a book. As a result of this careful, conscientious work carried on for twelve consecutive years Mr. Richardson has developed a strain of phenomenal layers.

When his strain was sufficiently established to justify it, Mr. Richardson began to advertise in the poultry papers. He now has calls for stock from all over the United States and Canada, and from across the water. He does not get the prices fanciers get for their birds, but still receives a satisfactory remuneration. The highest price he ever received was $45 for a cockerel and hen ; but $25 for a cockerel and $10 to $15 for a pullet are not uncommon figures. Of course he has many birds that he sells for much less. From the sale of breeding stock and eggs for hatching combined with market eggs and fowls sold for eating, Mr. Richardson cleaned up $1,009.31 in 1910, and kept his job as a shoe cutter besides!

Mr. Richardson has an acre of land on Linwood street in Haverhill, about a mile and a half from the center of the city. The ground is high, and the view from the plant is delightful. The buildings are not imposing. There is a long laying house 60x12 feet, divided into six pens, with dirt floors. This house is cheaply constructed and is covered with a red roofing paper. He has a chicken house 25 x 8, divided into three pens, and a brooder house 6x6. "Put your money in stock rather than in buildings," is Mr. Richardson's advice, and he practices what he preaches. "Start with the best stock you can get hold of. Pay $25 for a single bird, if necessary. Don't hesitate a minute, if it is worth it. The more money you pay for stock, other things being equal, the more money your stock will earn for you."

Mr. Richardson's poultry business is growing so fast that he is seriously contemplating giving up his job in the shoe shop and devoting all his time to it. He is negotiating for two acres of land which joins his, and if he gets it will greatly enlarge his plant. He now carries from 150 to 175 breeding birds through the winter and raises about 300 chicks.

Twelve years ago Mr. Richardson did not have a cent. He now owns a house and lot, has a good equipment and has money in the bank — all the result of side-line poultrv keeping. And he is a comparatively young man yet !

CHAPTER II. Making a Start

The great advantage of side-line poultry keeping is that a man can make a start and get his experience while working at his regular busitiess. I hope the reader of this book will dismiss from his mind at once any thought that poultry keeping is a get-rich-quick scheme. It is not. There is good money in the business, as I have shown and shall show, but not every one can get hold of it. Doubtless the proportion of failures is as great in the poultry business as in any other. Riding through the country one sees plant after plant abandoned and falling into decay. One is continually meeting the man who was once enthusiastic over poultry keeping, but is now disillusioned and tells you sadly. "There's nothing in it." And when a man buys a poultry farm his neighbors shake their heads and prophesv failure.

EXPERIENCE NECESSARY.

The causes of failure in the poultry business are doubtless as numerous as in any other, but the cause that is the most prolific is inexperience. There are three things that every man seems to think he can do : preach the Gospel, : edit a newspaper, and run a poultry plant. But he finds if he tackles any one of these jobs that he is up against a bigger proposition than he realized.

Some time ago I received a letter from a woman whose husband had made some money in the drug business and now wanted to get away from it into the freer life of the farm. There was a poultry plant near where they lived that was for sale, the owner haying made a failure of it, and the woman wrote me to know what chance her husband would have for success if he sold his store and bought the plant, knowing nothing of the business. I wrote back that he would have just exactly the same chance that a man would have who knew nothing of the drug business and who should buy out her husband's store. Set it down as the basic principle in all your calculations, that the poultry business requires just as careful an apprenticeship as any other, and that the man who is to succeed must know it root and branch.

BEGIN SMALL AND GROW.

Fnitunatelv a man can serve his apprenticeship to the poultry business while he is earning his bread and butter at something- else, and this to me is one of its chief charms. In what other business in the world can a man begin so small and invest so little money at the start? If a man has an old dry goods box at his command, a sitting hen and a clutch of eggs, he can set his feet in a path that may lead on to fortune.

vSavs "Connuercial Poultry": "'It is a matter of history that nearly every one of the large poultry plants in the United States that has pro^■ed successful has been built up from a small foundation. It is also a matter of history that there are a numlier of large plants that have proved unsuccessful and unprofitable simpl}' because the owner undertook to accomplish something without fitting himself for the task. Those who have succeeded have been content to start in a small way and expand as their knowledge of the business and their abiilty to handle it warranted the expansion.