HOW TO MAKE POULTRY PAY.

Waipawa Mail, Volume I, Issue 17, 9 November 1878, Page 3

HOW TO MAKE POULTRY PAY.

The following sensible sentences contain suggestions which may prove serviceable to some of the wives of our agricultural settlers: —“Does it pay to raise poultry for market ?” (asks a correspondent of the Prairie Farmer.) Of course it does; that is, if you understand the business. 1 speak from experience, for \ have been in the business nine years. 1 blundered a good deal at first, but l have made a success of it. Last year I raised over two thousand chickens for market, and the result was very gratifying from a pecuniary point, t here is no secret about it; any farmer's wife or daughter can do what 1 have done. Lt don't pay to keep a little, old fashioned barn-yard fowl; it costs nearly as much to rise a four pound mongrel as it does to raise a ten pound Brahma ; and it don't pay to let chickens shift for themselves, living on what they can pick up, with, perhaps a handful of grain occasionally, and roosting wherever they can find a place, an easy prey for vermin. (Jet some of the improved varieties, give them comfortable quarters and plenty food and drink, and, my words for it, they will put money in your pocket. If you do not feed able to get pure blood fewls to begin with, I can tell you how to improve your present stock of common hens at a trilling expence. Send to some reliable poultry breeder and get a cock of some of the large breeds ; no matter if he is not combed end not feathered according to the “ standard, ” if he is young vigorous, and large boned, that is all you want. Mate this cock with a dozen of your largest common hens. The chickens raised from this cross will be halfbreds, and, at maturity,—will weigh from two to four pounds each more than tlie common variety; you can figure for yourself and see whether it would pay or not.