The poultry business as a business to occupy a man’s time and earn him a livelihood, is a thing of recent origin and was little heard of before 1890.  Since that time it has undergone a somewhat painful, though steady growth.  Many people have lost money in the business and have given it up in disgust, but on a whole the business has progressed wonderfully, and now shows features of development that are clearly beyond the experimental stage and are undoubtedly here to stay.

The suggestion has been made by those who have failed or have seen others fail in the poultry business, that success was impossible because of the destructive competition of the farmer, whose expense of production is small.  Herein lies a great truth and a great error.  The farmer’s cost of production is small, much smaller than that on most of the book-made poultry farms—­but the inference that the poultryman’s cost of production cannot be lowered below that of the farmer is a different statement.

The farm of our grandfather was a very diversified institution.  It contained in miniature a woolen mill, a packing house, a cheese factory, perhaps a shoe factory and a blacksmith shop.  One by one these industries have been withdrawn from general farm-life, and established as independent businesses.  Likewise our dairy farms, our fruit farms, and our market gardens have been segregated from the general farm.  This simply means that manufacturing cloth, or cheese, or producing milk, or tomatoes can be done at less cost in separate establishments than upon a general farm.

The general farm will always grow poultry for home consumption, and will always have some surplus to sell.  With the surplus, the poultryman must compete.  His only hope of successful competition is production at lower cost.  Can this be done?  It is being done, and the numbers of people who are doing it are increasing, but they spend little money at poultry shows, or with the advertisers of poultry papers, and hence are little heard of in the poultry world.

The people whose names and faces are in the poultry papers are frequently there only while their money lasts.  They write long articles and show pictures of many houses and yards to prove that there is money in the poultry business, but if one should keep their names and put the question to them five years hence, a great many could say, “Yes, there is money in the poultry business; mine is in it.”

Such people and such plants do not get the cost of production down below the farmer’s level.  Between these two classes of poultry plants, the writer hopes in this work to show the distinction.

CHAPTER II

What branch of the poultry business?