Farmers’ Fowls.

Manawatu Herald, 9 February 1904, Page 3

Farmers’ Fowls.

When you see a man living in a city with a bit of a back yard a few feet square, making a few pounds every year from about a dozen purebred fowls, the possibilities of this great yet almost untouched —industry in Australia begin to present themselves.

I once saw the balance-sheet of a man who only had one small pen of pure-breds, and his return for the year, clear profit, was over 100 per cent. That sounds big, and many careful housewives will assure you that their fowls hardly pay for their feed; but if you will notice, they will nearly always tell you, also, that they don’t believe in pure fowls. They like a good cross - or in other words, a “ barn-door ” which lays in the season, but rarely at any other time of the year. That is the secret of the whole business. The old, world-out fable that “ barn-door ” are hardier and easier reared than thoroughbreds is so prevalnnt even to-day that hundreds aye, and thousands —of people who could be adding considerably to their wages if they kept a few pure-bred birds, which were bred for egg production, are simply wasting their time and money in keeping a lot of “ barn-doors,” that eat their heads off, and, except in rare instances, do not lay in the winter.—Australian Hen ”