EXAMPLES OF WELL-CONCEIVED POULTRY-FARMS, AND DISCUSSION OF CAPITAL INVOLVED, FROM THE EASTERN POINT OF VIEW.

By A. F. Hunter

There has come a decided change of front in the poultry business, and poultry-farms are now being developed that are commercially successful, whereas but a few years ago failures were the rule. A great improvement in appliances for conducting the business on a large scale, coupled with more intelligent methods of operating large poultryfarms, has effected this change of front, and today there are poultry-farms on which two dollars net profit is cleared annually from each head of laying stock. The three most important points in this improvement are better housing, more intelligent feeding and handling, and great gain in the methods of artificial hatching and rearing. The better housing has taken the form of opening the houses to fresh air and sunshine, a reform which is in keeping with the more hygienic housing of human beings. The more intelligent feeding and handling takes the form of dry-feeding (or "hopper-feeding" as it is sometimes called) and consists of keeping part or all of the food before the birds all the time, so that they eat slowly and naturally, -which "natural" feeding gives decidedly better results in general health of the flocks and greatly reduces the labor charge. The great gain in methods of artificial hatching and rearing is seen in the improved incubators and brooders, with which should be coupled the better knowledge of conditions essential to best results from their operation.

A New Jersey example.

The amount of capital required for a poultry-farm will depend on the extent of the operations, and, in a measure, on local conditions. At Lakewood Farm, located at Burrsville, near Lakewood, New Jersey, an up-to-date poultry-farm of the best type, the total capital invested in farm, buildings, appliances and stock is $14,000. On this farm in 1904 were kept 3,000 head of laying stock, which paid the owners, after allowing 10 per cent for depreciation and 5 per cent interest, a little over $7,000 net profit. On this farm additional buildings are being erected, which means more capital invested, and it is the intention to develop it to a capacity of 10,000 head of layers. This is a purely commercial poultry-farm, the chief aim being eggs for market, and during the year under review the operations were wholly along that line, the only departure from it being the sale of 400 mature pullets in the fall of that year. To this profitable line of work there is being added the sale of breeding stock in the fall and winter, of eggs for hatching in spring, and newly hatched chicks, all three additional sources of profit.

The type of poultry-house adopted at this farm is 128 feet in length and 16 feet in width, divided by board partitions into pens 16 x 16 feet each; in each pen are housed 50 layers. The front of the

pen is of three windows, the two at the side being fitted to slide in front and rear of the one in the center, making two thirds or less of the front open at pleasure. A roosting apartment, lifted three feet above the floor and which may be closed by a swinging curtain in front, is across the rear end of each pen; exercising yards 90 feet long by 16 feet wide extend south from each pen. As the soil of that section of New Jersey is clean sand, there is no poisoning of the ground by the droppings, every rain-storm or heavy shower effectually cleansing it.

A commodious grain-storage house, 30 x 30 feet in size, is located in the rear and conveniently near the stock houses; the farm offices occupy one end of this house, and the well-lighted basement is occupied by the twenty-five 360-egg incubators used for hatching the chicks. A brooder house 110 feet long, which was formerly equipped with a hotwater pipe-brooder system, has been changed to the individual-lamp-brooder system, and is now being extended to a total length of 400 feet. This is divided into pens 4 feet wide by 10 feet long, each pen having its separate brooder and being capable of accommodating 50 to 75 chicks, making a chick-capacity of 5,000 to 7,500 head in the one house. In addition to this, there are a score of outdoor brooders and as many more colony brooder houses, the total chick-capacity of the farm being 8,000 to 10,000 head.

Fig. 197. Cross-section of poultry-house, showing details. Go-well Poultry-Farm," " Orono, Maine.-A, roosts; B, roost platform, floor of roosting-closet; C, C, swinging curtains; D, swinging doors between pens: E, broody coopsone in each end of pens; F, nest-boxes,- twelve in each end of pens; G, food hopper; H, grit, shells and charcoal hoppers.

very much colder climate, is the "Go-well PoultryFarm," Orono, Maine. Here, the 2,000 laying stock is all housed under one roof, the poultryhouse being 400 feet long by 20 feet wide and divided by board partitions (Fig. 197) into pens 20 x 20 feet each; 100 head of Barred Plymouth Rock pullets is kept in each pen. This house is most substantially built, with double board floor throughout, strongly timbered and solid-boarded, and both roof and walls shingled with heavy sheathing paper beneath the shingles all over. The total cost of the house was $2,700. This low cost is eloquent of the

advantage of being in the lumber region, where there are great mills near at hand.

This poultry-house is the result of much experiment and observation, and is planned to minimize the labor while giving the maximum of results. It is lifted a foot and a half to two feet above the ground by a wall of cobblestones, has a doublepitch roof, the apex of the roof being half way between the front of the roosting-closet and the house front. A hand-car track is suspended from the roof, and all the doors swing both ways, allowing the car of food or water to be pushed along from pen to pen the entire length of the house. This labor-saving arrangement, together with the gain of feeding at convenience by the hopper

Fig. 198. One form of colony house for chickens. feeding method, enables one man to do all the work of feeding and caring for 2,000 layers.

In this house is illustrated the advanced type of fresh-air construction. It is located very nearly up to 45 degrees north latitude, and yet the birds housed in it have nothing but two cloth curtains between them and all-outdoors in that very cold climate. The front of each pen is boarded up for a length of two and a half feet at each end, and the whole front is boarded up three feet from the floor; a cloth curtain, tacked to a swinging frame hinged at the top, and two windows to give light on days when it is so stormy the curtains cannot be raised, make the remainder of the pen-front. The roostingcloset is raised three feet from the floor, making the whole floor of the pen available for exercise. The roosting-closet has a double board floor, is double boarded all about, the rear wall and roof being tightly packed with planer shavings, and the entire front is closed by a swinging curtain, tacked to a frame which is hinged to the roof. The front of the house is high, and the windows and curtained space set high, in order that the sunlight may reach the extreme rear of the floor in the colder days of winter when the sun is low in the south. Along the front, below the curtain opening, is a slatted front food-hopper filled with a mixture of dry meals and beef scraps, and at each end are

hoppers for crushed shells, grit and charcoal, which are accessible to the fowls at all times. The floors of the pens are covered in winter with scratching litter of straw or swale hay, and on this litter a feed of dry grain is thrown twice a day; a halfbarrel tub of cut clover-hay is supplied to each pen daily. The pullets put in this house late in the fall do not go out of it till the ground is fully dry in the spring; and here we find four square feet of floor space per bird, with the other conditions made right, ample for a sojourn of about six months, and the excellent health of the birds is proved by the eminently satisfactory egg-yield.

There is a plank walk three and a half feet wide and elevated about five feet from the ground, the

entire length of the house in front. There are two yards, each 100 feet long by 20 feet wide, for each pen; one set of yards is north of the house and the other south of it. When the south yards become fouled by the accumulated droppings, the fences are lifted, the soil plowed, and a crop of some kind grown to disinfect it; and vice versa.

There are also 30 colony houses, each 7 x 12 feet in size, 5 feet high in front by 4 feet high at the back; these are used as brooder houses in the spring, two brooders with fifty to sixty chicks each being put in a house. When the chicks are large enough to wean from the brooders, the brooders are taken out, the chicks being left to grow to maturity in the houses, excepting that the cockerels are killed for market when of broiler size. These colony brooder houses are set on runners and can be drawn from one place to another. In midsummer they are placed with the back to the south and are blocked up to a height of about a foot, so that there is good shade and protection from the heat of the sun, both inside and beneath them.

Estimate.

In the incubator cellar at Go-well PoultryFarm, beneath the barn, there are twenty 360-egg incubators. At the price of $30 each, these incubators cost $600. Sixty indoor brooders would cost $480, and thirty colony houses $600. The poultry-house for 2,000 head of stock cost $2,700. This amounts to $4,380, and leaves $620 for other appliances and tools, bringing the cost of all houses and equipment on this 2,000-head poultry-farm at $2.50 per bird. The cost of the 128-foot houses at Lakewood farm, including yard fences and everything complete, was $600 each, and they carry 400 head of layers each. Estimating that the cost of incubators, brooders and other tools and appliances would be about $1 per head of laying stock, we again have $2.50 per head as the capital required to well-equip a poultry-farm.

Since farms themselves vary greatly in price, depending on size, value of the land, value of the dwelling house and farm buildings, location and numerous other factors, it is obviously impossible to do more than estimate the amount of capital required for the farm itself. As the cost of Lake

wood Farm is included in the total of capital invested, and that total is, in round numbers, $14,000, we have a capital of $3.663 per head of laying stock; and it is reasonable to assume that $4 per head is a fair estimate of the capital required for land and equipment for a poultry-farm.

CAPITAL REQUIRED FOR A CALIFORNIA POULTRY-FARM, WITH DISCUSSION

OF SYSTEMS OF ORGANIZATION.

By M. E. Jaffa

In California there are two different methods of conducting poultry-farms, the colony plan, where a large number of fowls of different ages run together, and the intensive system, where the fowls are separated into small flocks, each having a separate house and yard. The advantages of the latter method are too numerous to explain in a short article, but chief among them are that different ages are kept apart, and those that have outlived their usefulness can be disposed of; disease can be controlled and the spread prevented; and trap nests can be used with more effectiveness. The colony plan does not, nor will it ever, conduce to systematic and highly progressive poultry-culture; such can be attained only by the intensive plan, and statistics fully bear out the statement. It would be far better to describe what a typical poultry-farm for California should be than to describe a typical California poultry-farm.

California is exceptionally well-favored for profitable poultry-raising both as regards markets and climate, there being very few days when the fowls can not be in the yard.

The fowl commonly used for commercial pur

Land can be purchased at $50 to $100 per acre, but if near any of the large centers the price will be higher. From this estimate it would appear that about $3,500 would be sufficient to start such a plant. The amount of land necessary for the above plant is very small, not exceeding two acres. If, however, it is desired to raise crops, and alfalfa is of inestimable value in feeding, then more acreage will be required, the size of the farm in that case depending on the ideas and financial condition of the prospective poultryman.

Longhouse method.

It is true that the intensive method can be practiced by having a separate house for each yard; but it does not seem to the writer that such a plan is as convenient as one long house (indicated in Fig. 199). By the longhouse method one man can accomplish more in less time than by working under any other system. In inclement weather the attendant is under cover the entire time required for feeding, cleaning houses or gathering eggs. The roosts receive an adequate supply of sunshine and air by means of the skylights in each section. The house itself can be kept in a perfectly sanitary condition by frequent cleaning of the dropping boards and applying thin crude oil, or 28° distillate, to them and to the roosts. The nest-boxes, being of sheet iron and having no solder, can be thoroughly cleaned by heat. It will be seen from the plan (Fig. 199) that three yards are provided for two pens; the object of this is to have an alternate yard for each flock while the regular yard is being turned over and cleansed.

While the initial outlay for such a plant is

If it is deemed desirable to start with a less number of fowls than is provided for by the plan here given, the size of the main house can be scaled to meet the requirements of the smaller flock; and additional sections can be built to the main house as the increase of the business warrants. It can readily be seen that a man's income may be doubled without correspondingly increasing the capital invested. It is better, however, to learn the business on a small scale and enlarge slowly, being sure of each step.

THE EQUIPMENT AND CAPITAL REQUIRED FOR PLANTING AND DEVELOPING AN ORCHARD.

By Ralph S. Eaton

Conditions vary so much in different localities that it is impossible to give definite statements in regard to the equipment and capital required for developing an orchard that will have general application. The statements and figures given below are based entirely on the writer's own experience in Nova Scotia. These will vary widely with different growers, depending on the management and the ability of the overseer to make men work intelligently and carefully, and also with the kind of fruit-growing and the locality.

The land.

In Nova Scotia, the value of land suitable for an orchard varies from $10 to $100 per acre. In selecting a site at a convenient distance from a country town, a choice could be made between wooded blocks of spruce and fir, twenty to forty years old, at a cost of $20 per acre; fields in pasture recently brought in from woodland, at a cost

Fig. 202. Baldwin apple tree (twenty-two barrels for 1904 and 1905). Kentville, Nova Scotia. (Ralph S. Eaton.)

of $30 to $40 per acre; and fields in a good state of cultivation, at $100 per acre.

The wooded land might give sufficient net returns in cord-wood and fence-rails to cover the first cost, while the expense of converting it into an easily cultivated field might make its ultimate

Fig. 203. A good Ben Davis apple tree for Nova Scotia, at the age to begin to bear profitably.

by contract. The difference in the cost of plowing the pasture-field as compared with the older cultivated field, and the removal of stones and roots which are usually plentiful in new land, might bring the cost of this field quite up to the older cultivated field. Average conditions would be in favor of the pasture-field.

If gaining time in the growth of trees is an object, the wooded land, cleared and brush burned, could be planted at once, the trees set among the stumps, removing only those which would interfere. Few persons would be inclined to plant trees in such crude quarters, and the writer would hesitate to recommend this plan had he not had the experience of growing twenty acres of his orchard in this way for four years, and receiving the verdict of the public that there were no better trees to be found of the same age planted in the best cultivated orchards.

If one wishes to economize in the purchase of trees, and also to get the land free of stumps before planting, 1,000 root-grafts of apple could be purchased at a cost of $5 to $10, and grown in a nursery for three or four years. A sufficient number of first-class trees should then be available to set out ten acres of orchard, and the stumps would be in a condition to be removed easily.

In the case of the pasture-land, a saving of capital and annual expenditure might be made for a few years, if one is simply planting apple trees, and about forty to the acre, or two rods apart, by planting the trees without plowing around them, using thorough mulching or hand cultivation with shovel or fork, as would be the method of treating the trees in the stump land. This treatment might apply with equal economy to the highest-priced