But while it is true that the farmer’s subsidized hens have a very disastrous effect at times upon the market, the fact is that, notwithstanding the tariff, we import millions of dozens of eggs laid each year by the pauper hens of Canada and often of Denmark.

Another fact to be considered is, that it is when eggs are most plentiful that the farmers depress the market.  With their ways of handling their poultry, their hens lay only when conditions are most favorable, and in the winter when eggs are as high as fifty cents a dozen in cities, they have no eggs to market.  Like the market gardener, to be timely in market is to succeed.  A week may mean an annihilation of profits.

It is a different proposition to raise a few chickens as a side line as the farmers do.

A workman at the Connecticut place of one of the experts who has revised this book had a bit of land not more than l00 X 200 feet, and for several years cleared $100 a year by raising eggs and broilers, doing the work together with that of a little garden of small fruits before and after working hours The chickens fed largely on green food in summer.

In selling your surplus at a profit, the same principles apply as in raising a surplus to sell at a profit.

While poultry and egg raising does not require that you must be first, it does require that you market your produce at a time when the prices are highest.

You must hatch at a time which will allow the young hens to begin laying as winter approaches; the food must keep up animal heat and the house must be warm enough to make the hens comfortable, and the conditions must be such as to keep them laying.

As an experiment, we once raised six pullets.  They were hatched in May, and in December they began laying.  All during the winter they laid never less than four and some times six eggs a day, and kept this up until spring.

They were fed on wheat and corn and plenty of meat scraps and green food.  They were kept in what was practically a glass house, receiving the benefit of the sun during the day, and were protected from the winds.  The effect was to bring as near as possible the condition of the warm months; these paid very well.

Ducks are less frequently raised than chickens and often realize good returns.

The popular fallacy that ducks require a stream or pond is gradually passing away.  There was a time when nearly all ducks were raised in this way, feeding on fish as the principal diet, but experience has proved that ducks raised without a stream or pond tend to put on flesh instead of feathers, and they have not the oily, fishy flavor of those raised on the water.  Nearly all of the successful duck raisers now use this method.

This is bringing the duck more into prominence as an article of food; as James Rankin says in “Duck Culture,” “People do not care to eat fish and flesh combined.  They would rather eat them separate.”