As adjuncts of this business may be mentioned the sale of a line of poultry supplies and the handling of other pet stock, such as dogs or Shetland ponies.  In this case the advantage of such additions depends upon the fact that the greatest cost is that of advertising, and, if anything that will be associated in the buyer’s mind with the main article be added to the catalog, it will result in additional sales at a low rate of advertising cost.

Egg Farming the Most Certain and Profitable.

We have now discussed all the branches of the poultry business save that of egg production, and the result of our review indicates that most of these fields are either of limited opportunities or that they present obstacles in the very nature of the work that prevent their being conducted on a large scale.

Egg production is undoubtedly the most promising and profitable branch of the poultry industries.  The chief reason that this is true is to be found in the fact that the most difficult feature in chicken growing is the rearing of young stock through the brooding period.  Now, as the eggs laid by a hen are worth several times the value of her carcass, it stands to reason that once we succeed in rearing pullets, egg farming must be the most profitable business to engage in.

For each hen that passes through a laying period there is her own carcass, and at least one cockerel, that are necessarily produced and that must be marketed.  Now, the pullet is worth more for egg producing than can be realized for her as a broiler or roaster, and her extra worth may be considered as counter-balancing the price at which cockerels must be sold.

The egg crop represents about two-thirds of the value of all poultry products, and the demand for the high grade goods has never been satisfied.  Egg farming cannot easily be overdone, whereas any other type of poultry production must compete with the cockerels and hens that are a by-product of egg farming.

Egg farming by no means relieves one from the difficulties of incubation and growing young stock, but it does throw these difficult parts of the business at the natural season of the year and results in a distribution of work throughout a longer period of time.

In the remainder of the volume we will consider the poultryman as an egg farmer.  We will also, unless otherwise stated, assume that he is a White Leghorn egg farmer, who is hatching by artificial incubation.  Such reference to the marketing of poultry flesh or to other breeds will be made only in comparison of this type of the business or in relation to the production or handling of farm-grown poultry.

CHAPTER III

THE POULTRY PRODUCING COMMUNITY

The builder of air castles in Poultrydom invariably starts out with a resumé of the specialization of the world’s work and the wonderful advances in the economy of production of the large corporate organization, compared with the individual producer.