Standard and commercial poultry culture

Preface

In view of the universal and increasing interest in Poultry Culture and its great and growing magnitude, and the general earnest inquiry coming from everywhere concerning this pursuit, its principles and its profits and remarking the general inacquaintance among the masses with the fundamental facts and plainest principles that underlie and control this industry, as related to, and assisted by modern science, we have thought it essential to success to place before the general public, the new beginner and all who are interested in anyway in poultry, its underlieing principles, without a full knowledge of which no one can foresee or shape the issues of his enterprise, and cannot, therefore, wisely decide to engage in it with capital, healthful confidence and assurance of safety. The mission of this book is to formulate such facts and to afford the philosophy upon which they are founded. In other words we aim to offer in clear and simple style the essential principles of Poultry Culture which control and place this important industry upon a reliable business basis. We offer it to all with our fraternal regards and hope that each will be pleased and profited by it and anxious to assist in sending everywhere its fruitful truths by consciously commending its merit, T. B. Spalding,

Chapter I

OULTRY Culture, though carelessly conducted and scarcely ever studied or sustained by confidence and capital, is yet, the largest, the most important and profitable of any business product of the United States to-day. Though frequent failures attend the reckless attempts to build vast fortunes from this pursuit at once without capital, without experience and without a just conception of what i3 required to insure success, yet, we fearlessly affirm that no other avocation on earth will average a larger net return for the time and study, the talent, care and capital involved than poultry culture. We reluctautly affirm that there is no other known industry so little studied and with whose plainest principles the people at large are so generally unacquainted

Wherever an Incubator is operated in public, it is marvelous to note the vast numbers who inquire, "how long it takes the machine to hatch, and how is it possible for the chick to escape from the egg without the assistance of the hen?"

Poultry Culture as a scientific industry is really in its infancy and the idea that study and science and principles are involved surpasses the modest comprehension of many.

Indeed the almost universal idea is that poultry culture, like Divine Grace and Christian Virtues, are all good, and wise, and well as ornamental indulgences, if only one is not asked to study it, to be governed by its principles, and above all, it must not cost anything. Then at once it generates difficulties and doubts and if its claims be honestly advocated and a little pressed, suspicion is started, that though the advocate is doubtless sincere, he is certainly overly sanguine.

Zeal is certainly an essential element in the prosecution of any enterprise and he who succeeds in any avocation must, like the intelligent, progressive poultryman, "drink deeply at the well of enthusiasm." The deeper his devotion the more efficient his service and the more he magnifies the merits of his cause.

Poultry Culture, like every other occupation, should be prosecuted as a profession by those who especially love it ; for, such an impetus, or inspiration, through all past history, has been the surest guarantee to great success. Thus, from the love-labor, the ardent zeal, or inspiration of Luther, Melancthon, Bacon, Washington, Noah Webster, Franklin, and Fulton, were Religion and Liberty and Literature, and their offsprings, Phylosophy, Invention, the Arts and Sciences all rescued and resurrected from the fog and fable of slumbering ages and given a firm foundation on the high and luminous plain of history. The benedictions that have descended upon the whole human family from the intelligent zeal and service of these sages have covered the world like a mantle of light, have enshrined their names in remembrance that will continue co-eval with all coming ages and perish only with time and the solemn temples and the great Globe, itself.

But, these services, however great, do not discourage nor close the avenues to other altitudes resplendent with rare and equal distinction. Bacon, first of all philosophers that ever lived, broke boldly away from the forms and fashions about and before him, and, tearing the falsehood and flowers from the face of philosophy, he taught and popularized the sublime conception and practical truth, that rather than wrangle amid the vapors and vagaries of metaphysical distinctions, the higher and holier and wiser work for the common sense people of this world is, to learn what is useful first and what is ornamental afterwards — how to earn an honest daily living and how to earn and make good shoes and clothes.

And so, Dear Friends, of all the great questions that crowd ami

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comfort and confound the age, how little, indeed, of all, or any that is universally useful do we really know ? In the so-called learned professions ; the law, the ministry, and medicine, and in agriculture, or the application of science to the furtherance of any of the great business industries— the frequent failures and the universal disaster and distress result from want of practical acquaintance with the essential principles and the details demanded in each respective avocation. There is no saying more trite and true, more sensible and suggestive than that, "The man may wisely be feared who has deeply drank in and digested one worthy work. " Rather let me say that thoroughness is advised in every thing.

The purpose, therefore, of these plain and unpretentious . pages is to discuss impartially the principles of poultry culture — to place fairly before those who do me the compliment of their careful consideration of a few facts drawn from study and experience in the interest of poultry culture as a profession, because the pertinent questions ccmo up from everywhere, " Will poultry cultnre on a large scale pay ?" In other words, are there any clear and certain principles of universal application upon which the enterprise of poultry culture may be safely and profitably prosecuted and enlarged to commercial magnitude ? Are the inherent qualities of the hen, her diet for different duties, and her diseases, and the exciting and predisposing causes that contribute to all her ills yet known? There are sure and sensible preventives, and, are there high and hopeful hygienic laws that relate as reliably to fowls as to the human family ? Can the principles and proper mating for market and for ideal standard specimens be confidently prescribed, and can ovulation in hens be urged, increased, ox restrained, or safely stopped at will ; and are the priciples of incubation fully understood, and can natures whole operations in the dcvicate processes of incubation ba plainly pointed out, and all of nature's requirements as completely met by the application of science and educated common sense as by the ancient slow and uncertain system of setting hens ? In short, is there anywhere an authoritative publication asserting the principles ofpoidtry culture covering these and other kindred questions?

The absence of such a book and continued inquiry suggest the necessity for some such authoritative declaration of principles ; and will, we trust, be an acceptable apology for offering this book.

In all we shall offer, or assert in this work we shall aim to be hon-

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•

est, and our highest hope in being able to satisfy all of our sincerity is, in every thing we offer to give the reason why. Thus are the writer and reader on equal footing and all enabled to see the force, or folly of every idea. Thus shall we hope to bar that brainless charge of " offering only theory."

To those who dogmatically deal only in the delicious diet of their own experience there seems to be, somehow, an insufferable sensitiveness when scientific truth corrects some antiquated error. Especially to those who are innocent of all ideas, there is an inherent odium inseparably associated with the epithet of "Theory." Whenever an old physcian relaxes his grip on professional principles and for twenty, or thirty years ruminates back and about over professional pastures that have been closely picked and beaten down and dry, he always inflates with self-sufficiency and wraps about in raiment of perfect experimental self-righteourness and from the throne of such immaculate wisdom he hurls the terrible taunt of " theory " at the clearer heads of all who love the light and seek the truth and offer to all some sensible reasons : so every body may clearly understand just what they intend to do.

What is theory ? Why theory is the principle by which any operation is done. We build houses and cultivate commerce and calculate time and tides and do all the wonderous workings of the world through theory. Those, who, therefore, deride its dictates affirm, in effect, that they are blind and unguided. Theory sent Columbus in search of the New World. Theory opened the golden gates and revealed the mathematical grandeur in the deep and delicate problems of astromical science. Theory unfolded to Fulton and Franklin the practical utility of steam and lightning and Theory has been the motive power in all the brains behind all the discoveries and inventions, all the arts and sciences and agencies that have advanced the world on and up to the full blaze of glory that illumines the nineteenth century. Theory is the strand of classified pearls of the immortal mind. Theory is the essence of intellect, the royal child of cultured thought. While we love intelligent experience as our mother we embrace intelligent theory as our wife. And so in our onward march through the theme before us, we shall aim to so associate the two and make our thought, our principles, our theory so plain, so practical, so self-evident that even " the wayfaring man, " the overly captious may comprehend and be content, and so, without

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further exordium, we enter, upon our subject.

Chapter II. Poultry Culture Condusive To Happiness And Home Contentment

THE love of animals and pets is inherent in the human race ; and especially such as may be subservient both to pleasure and to profit ; and thus it is, in a degree, that domestic poultry has become almost as universal as vegetation and indigenous in every door yard. The private importance of poultry culture can only be estimated in the absence of fresh eggs and spring chickens which must certainly ensue unless ones-self, or others prosecute this pleasent pursuit in excess of self supply. Indeed, were these denied the epicure, the rarest luxuries of modern life were lost and cook and kitchen soon would lose their potent power "to sooth the savage breast. " Coffee and cake, confectionary, pastry and pies and pudding all cheerfully confess the delightfull, and all-important, the omnipotent influence of fresh and finely flavored eggs. Nor is this influence exclusively confined to taste, but enters as brain food, as we shall note ere long upward into the divine domain of human intellect.

It is, therefore, impossible to over estimate the private importance of this delicious and most healthful diet ; and, following the necessity of their supply we come to consider the almost incredulous public demand for poultry and poultry products ; and so, we may in some measure determine the very high commercial status of this important industry in other countries and in our own.

In a series of thoroughly elegant, full and accurate articles in the Fanciers Gazette of 1883-4, Capt. Jas. E. White of Englewood, Ills., has contributed to poultry literature the statistics that cover this question so completely that, by his courtesy, I quote at length from a source so faultless and full :

" Belgium, with an area of 11,373 square miles and a population of

5,253,821 is one of the smallest and most densely populated powers on earth. About 60 per cent, of its area is under the most exhaustive cultivation and that being all of it that is capable of producing good crops. In order better to understand its extent it may be stated that Belgium is no larger than the state of Georgia while its population is three times larger, and this little country, as shown by its statistics, produces annually 274,967,824 eggs or 48 eggs for each man, woman and child in Belgium.

This, remember, is accomplished in a country where the most persistent effiort is made to cause the land to produce the food necessary for home consumption and where a vast amount of money is expended on the cultivation of the soil. From such a necessitous system of farming they derive no profit from their crops and are driven to strictest economy and subsist only by aid of poultry culture.

If such results obtain under the adverse circumstances just cited what grand possibilities suggest themselves with infinitely better facilities in every sense in such an avocation in a land like America. Our soil yields the richest returns for the slightest labor and here grain enough is annually wasted to feed the entire population of Belgium and yet in the United States the products of poultry culture do not meet the home demand.

"Again France, with an area of 204,147 square miles of which only 98,460 are capable of cultivation, realizes more than $200,000,- 000 annually from her poultry interests. The present population of France is 38,905,788 which, if an equal distribution of land were made, which is capable of cultivation, there would be two acres to each, and yet, with all the disadvantages of climate and the contraced acreage and high cost of food for fowls which here abounds almost spontaneous, France, notwithstanding, furnishes England annually over 800,000,000 eggs. In addition to this enormous exportation to England, the French people annually consume over 2,000,000,000 eggs, thus making a grand total of 2,800,000,000 eggs annually produced in our little sister republic. The value in cash of her importation to England annually is $13,000,000, and those consumed at home is placed at $35,000,000, and adding to these the poultry exported and consumed at home at $75,000,000,000 and $45,000,000, for stock carried over each year and it will be seen that the poultry industry of France represents an annual business of $168,000,000.

The egg producing districts of France being Normandy, Picardy,

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Artois, Soilsonuais, Yexin and Britany, are cold and damp as compared with this country, vastly inferior in natural and climatic conditions. There space being contracted, their fowls are confined and highly fed and so subjected from crowding to sickness and contagion, and, yet despite all these and other disadvantages the French poultry farmer realizes a net profit of from 15 to 85 per cent., or an average of over 20 per cent, from the poultry industry.

It will thus be seen that poultry culture in France, under a thorough system, with climatic disadvantages, limited range and want of forage, the difficulties are conquered and commercial poultry culture made highly remunerative. But, passing from the difficulties, the drawbacks, the drudgery of poultry culture and its commerce in foreign countries where eggs, rather than by wholesale hatching by machinery, appears to be the main purpose of the poultry man, we come to consider from the same statistical source the extent of the poultry industry in America under its present development and its capabilities under more energetic and scientific management. Careful inquiry reveals the astounding fact that the United States instead of producing more eggs than is required for home consumption, imports annually over $3,000,000 worth of eggs. We find that in 1872 we imported 6,000,000 dozens, which at 24 cents per dozen amounted to $1,440,000. The announcement that the demand so much exceeded the supply for this article of food should have fertilized the growth of this industry until home production attained such magnitude as to make importation unprofitable. But it failed to attract the attention of the producing classes and so we find that, our population constantly increasing ten years later, or in 1882, the United States imported 13,000,000 dozen eggs which at 24 cents per dozen equaled $3,120,000.

In 1868 a convention of butter, cheese and egg producers was held in Chicago and such reliable statistics as could be, were gathered without a systematic effort being made in that direction and were placed before the convention and limited though they were, they disclosed the fact that, the egg trade alone, amounted to $180,000,000, and with the poultry marketed to $250,000,000 per annum. The statistics presented were very incomplete being taken from a state here and there and in part made up from the knowledge of each in his own locality and so the sum fixed upon did not fully represent the value of the industry throughout the whole United States. Careful

12 STANDABD AND COMMEECIAL POULTRY CULTURE.

research reveals the fact that New York State consumes and supplies to her merchants and those of other eastern cities and states and to vessels sailing from her ports about $90,000,000 worth of this kind of food annually. Consider these figures a moment and you will begin to realize the magnitude of this industry. But New York does not produce what she sells or consumes. Enormous consignments come continually to her markets from foreign countries and from all over our land. Only a small portion of what she handles is produced within her borders. Not one-half received is consumed within the states, the larger portion being reshipped to surrounding cities and states, supplying vessels, places of pleasure resort, and the great hotels and eating houses of the cities within a radius of thirty of forty miles from New York City comprising a population of over fifteen million consumers of these supplies. New York state and city consumes about $45,000,000 worth of eggs and poultry annually and her regular population of both state and city being about 5,082,871 the average consumed by each individual in the state of New York is about $9.00 of poultry food anually and when we consider the interminable train of strangers that pour perpetually through her cities the wonder is that these figures are not magnified many fold in as much as eggs enter into nearly all our food and spring chickens may be found on every bill of fare. The fact is that this food cannot be furnished in sufficient quantities to meet the demand in all great cities and it is reasonable, therefore, to assume that the consumption of poultry food by each individual throughout the nation is as great as in densely populated cities, and a moment's reflection and common sense will justify the conclusion. In whole sections of country where agriculture forms the main pursuit, remote from cities and markets, . where every body earns their living by manual labor which requires much more animal food than supplies the same numbers addicted to sedentary life and raising such food upon their farms the amount consumed is vastly greater than in cities. In summer, when such food is mostly needed and unable long to keep the carcass of cow, cr calf, or hog until consumed or unable to sell, they draw their meat supplies very largely from the feathered flocks as needed and thus enormous numbers of eggs and fowls find their way to the table of the farmers and feed " the countless millions of the sons of toil." Again, we may further strengthen the assumption that these supplies are in greater demand out side of the gre .t cities by the fact that, in

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every village and inland town in America poultry and eggs are the universal medium of exchange between the farmer and family groceryman ; so that really, the inhabitants of these smaller incorporations subsist much more extensively upon poultry and eggs than the larger and more populous cities where they are less plenty. ' The foregoing being self-evident facts, it is therefore, modest and more than safe to draw our data from the commerce existing in New York as a basis for calculation with respect to the country at large.

Therefore, if New York state and city with her 5,082,871 steady population, independent of her transient population consumes $45,- 000,000 worth of poultry and eggs annually, the United States, with her 55,000,000 population must consume $495,000,000 worth, and in order to determine the value of the entire poultry industry of the country we must add to this $64,000,000 at to the value of fowls retained for breeding and laying stock and $600,000 the value of blooded fowls and eggs and thus it reveals the sum total for this industry in America of $559,600,000 annually, or as the full statistics would more than show, $600,000,000. "

Thus, we have liberally drawn from the articles and arguments the facts and figures of Capt. White, because the statistics are astounding and yet unquestionably true, and because the research is most thorough and the whole subject handled with that earnestness and elegance, power and precision that merits a prominent place in poultry literature. The same able writer has also affirmed that, "The poultry industry in the United States surpasses by several million dollars the annual value of wheat. "

Consulting statistics from other sources to verify the accuracy of these statements we find his figures invariably correct. From the circular of Mr. J. L. Campbell, of West Elizabeth, Penn., author and manufacturer of the Eureka Incubator advertised in this work, and commended as one of the best of machines, the author draws from the United States statistical bureau the following which is official. For the year 1882 the following figures reveal the cash value of the products of the United States. Cotton, $410,000,000 ; hay $436,000,- 000 ; dairy products $254,000,000 ; wheat $488,000,000 ; poultry and egg products, $560,000,000. Notwithstanding this, the later is the only product we do not export. Our entire yield, which is vastly insufficient, to meet the demands, is all consumed at home and besides, in 1882, statistics show we imported from foreign countries

14 STANDABD AND COMMEBOIAL POULTBY OULTUEE.

13,000,000 dozen eggs as against 6,000,000 dozen in 1872. " Still the clamor increases, the prices advance and the importation of these supplies from foreign countries more than double with each decade, such is the present business status of poultry culture in this country. Statistics are the dry est of intellectual diet, and yet beyond all things else on earth figures are fullest of truth. Mathematics reveal the actual reality of things.

They have shown us that the net profits of commercial poultry culture in foreign countries under the greatest disadvantages, are from 20 to 85 per cent. They have proved that of all the products of America eggs are mostly in demand, greater by far, beyond anything else than the supply. And they have shown, in consequence, our annual importation of eggs to reach a cash cost to this country over $3,000,000. This vast sum goes out of this country to foreign countries annually for eggs. Why don't we further cultivate this pleasant and profitable industry at home ? We have seen that the state of New York consumes $45,000,000 worth of these products annually and this divided by her 5,000,000 population, equals $9.00 of poultry and eggs consumed each year in the state of New York by each inhabitant, and so it may be seen by multiplying our national population of 55,000,000 inhabitants by $9.00, the amount consumed by each, that we have $495,000,000 as the sum total for poultry and eggs consumed each year in this country.

Then add $64,600.00 for stock and blooded fowls, and we reach the enormous sum of 559,000,000., or, if full statistics could be given to date the sum total would doubtless surpass $600,000,000.

Efforts are now being taken to make the statistics of American products reliably complete.

Statistics have shown that in comparison wheat, the greatest agricultural product in this country, is surpassed by poultry and eggs over $72,000,000., which amount of money is over four and a half times as much as President Jefferson paid France for the Western half of this continent. And this $72,000,000., remember, is in excess of the total cash value of the whole wheat crop in this, the greatest wheat growing country on the Globe. Hogs and hay and corn and cattle and cotton, wheat, oats and other American products are each and all cultivated extensively in certain sections, but altogether unknown in others, but poultry, like the blessed sunshine that imparts its favors and force to castle and cottage, brings its benedictions every where, wherever humanity hath found a home, and this universality of poultry culture, explains its strength and importance and proves that its private importance and commercial magnitude is almost fabulous and opens to capital and business competency the grandest and most fruitful possibilities. And yet, this giant young industry is but in its infancy. The world is just awakening to this traffic from the long dream of ages.

Until within the past few decades the idea of poultry culture as an industry, poultry culture, as a commerce was unthought of, unknown and ignored and, yet, a prejudice prevailed that bars the greatest results, that weakens the confidence of capital to its claims. The poultry culture of the past as compared with the present contains a general complexion of degradation that is almost comical. Indeed an honest cartoon or charicature of the poultry of a few years past would be equally ludicrous and difficult to draw. Until within the past 35 years the raising of poultry was never attempted by men. The wives of a few farmers, more intelligent and enterprising than the rest, were allowed to tolerate a few fowls that were a mongrel mixture of all the endless varities that had cohabited together, crossed up incestuously, ran riot and reveled in romance since the exit from Noah's Ark. These fowls, as I well remember them, combined every conceivable shape and color and all were covered by the truly suggestive name of " Dunghill Foivl. " The name is not of classic origin, but rather relates to the source whence they scratched out a scanty sustenance. They were taught by the terrors that were thick about, and by the suggestions of stern necessity to enter the realms of morpheus or retire to roost in the language of the time, on the fence, or in the trees and to forage in the fields and gardens and on grain stacks and in corn cribs and otherwise steal what they could from all other well fed stock. They anually hatched their chicks from the eggs they succeeded in hiding in the weeds and hedges, among briars and underbrush, behind old logs and stumps, in fence corners filled with smartweeds and fennel. Their eggs were hunted by crows by day, and by coons and other enemies by night, and thus these wild and wayward hens had a rough, romantic and cheerless chance. Often against all odds, however, two or three came creeping and clucking out of copse and chaos with one little sorrowful, sickly chick, and they were allowed to care for and com fort it, since their time was computed of little consequence. Again,

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some old blue biddy, with educated cunning above her kind, would overcome all opposition, and, sheltered thus from the rapacity of all around her, this long lost and finally forgotten, this ancient, earnest, dunghill hen would at last come out from her covert with a chick for every egg she hazarded with her life on the alter of devotion to maternal duty. The later summer and autumnal months, devoted thus to " nest hiding " and natural hatching, was the only serene, untarnished taste of pure repose and perfect peace that over filled and satisfied the soul of these guileless, goodly dunghill hens.

Now where on earth, in nature's vast domain, nor in colleges or vast cathedrals can there be learned such lessons of care and caution, of energetic honesty, of patient, persistent fortitude and faith as there, cloistered and self-concealed alike from friends and foe, was silently wrought out in the life and labors of this spontaneous, self-supporting barnyard poultry of the past. Though, like the christian cultured and truly good young Indian, or the haughty, highborn, romantic and realy noble red man of whom we read, they have been gathered in by life's relentless reaper and are gone, and covered up by the polished plowshare of civilized progress, still, for all the solace my youthful innocence found in their society and service, I owe to their memory this recognition, this tender tribute, this sad but fond farewell. But, to return to their history. These flocks were mated promiscuosly and by their own impulse and prowess. Often thirty or forty males meandering up and down and fighting over half as many females all indulging in a wholesale system of loose incestous revelry and riot. Such of this ancient stock as survived the wild winds of winter, its piercing cold, and ice and sleet and were not starved nor frozen on the roost, emerged in the spring with scaley legs and frozen combe and feet, with feathers full of vermin, and all so out of order that seldom they succeeded in dusting out the lice and gathering from grass and garbage nutrition enough to bring the abused systen back again to vernal action, to honest vital business, by the first of April or May. These ancient farm fowls were much the same in every section and state all over the continent. They crowed and cackled and looked alike, they wore the same general complexion and were characterized by the same essential cussedness everywhere between Maine and Mexico and from Oregon to Atlantic Ocean.