In England, Ireland and especially in Denmark, the government, or societies encouraged by the Government, have done a great deal to develop the poultry industry.  Depots for marketing and grading are maintained and the stock of the farmers is improved by fowls from the government breeding farms.

The Story of the “Big Coon.”

With apologies to Joel Chandler Harris, I will tell a little story.

Uncle Remus was telling the little boy about the “big coon.”  It seems that the “big coon” had been seen on numerous occasions, but all efforts at his capture had failed.  One night they saw the “big coon” up in the ’simmon tree, in the middle of the ten-acre lot.  All hands and the dogs were summoned.  To be sure of bagging the game, the tree was cut down.  The dogs rushed in but there was no coon.

“But, Uncle Remus,” said the little boy, “I thought you said you saw the big coon in the tree.”

“Laws, chile,” replied Uncle Remus, “doesn’t youse know dat it am mighty easy for folks to see something dat ain’t dar, when dey are lookin’ fer it?”

When scientific experimenters entered the poultry field about fifteen years ago, they found it swarming with old ladies’ notions.  For everything a reason was given, but these reasons were derived from the kind of dreams where that which pleases the human mind is seized upon and search is made to find ideas to back it, not because it is true, but because it “listens good” to the dreamer.  The first duty of the scientist was to banish these will-o’-the-wisp ideas that lead to no practical results.

For illustration Round eggs were supposed to hatch pullets and long ones cockerels.  Eggs will not hatch if it thunders.  Shipped eggs must be allowed to rest before hatching, the drug store was the universal source of relief when the chickens became sick, and red pepper and patent foods were the egg foods par excellence.  These things, thanks to the scientist, are no longer believed or regarded by well read poultrymen, and instead his attention has been turned to matters having a more happy relation to his bank account.

In clearing away the useless popular notions, the scientists themselves have not been free from their influence, especially when they seemed to agree with accepted scientific theory.  Many, indeed, are the ’coons in poultry science that have been seen because they were being looked for.

As a partial explanation it should be said that men available for scientific poultry work are very scarce.  Poultry keepers schooled in the University of the Poultry Yard have no conception of scientific methods, and would explain experimental results by a theory that would fail to fit elsewhere.  The available scientists on the other hand are seldom poultrymen.

Among the first men to take up animal husbandry work of all kinds, were the veterinarians.  For years the only poultry publications put out by the U.S.  Government were by veterinarians.  These dust covered volumes with their five color plates of the fifty-seven varieties of tapeworms, still rest on the shelves of public libraries, a monument to the time when the practical poultryman knew only things that weren’t so, and the scientific poultryman knew only things that were useless.