Ward, Lock & Co.'s poultry book : a guide for small or big poultry keepers, beginners and farmers / by Harry Roberts.

  • Harry Roberts
Date:
[1924?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Ward, Lock & Co.'s poultry book : a guide for small or big poultry keepers, beginners and farmers / by Harry Roberts. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    16/232 (page 12)
    income. Such is the case, also, with farmers as a class, whether the number kept be large or small. On farms poultry form part of the live stock kept, in accordance with the scheme of cultivation. The Novice The novice, with no practical experience whatever, who has decided to experiment in poultry keeping, may make a start in one of several ways. Of course, if he is going to get his first practical experience in someone else’s poultry yard, or by going as a pupil to one of the many poultry farms that take pupils, the question of how to begin will be, to a large extent, solved for him. But I am thinking more particularly of the beginner who proposes to make his first practical acquaintance with the subject on his own ground and by the application of his own intelligence. In the first place, then, I cannot too strongly impress upon him, no matter now large or ambitious may be his scheme for the future, to experiment on the very smallest scale dur¬ ing the first season. Just as much can be learnt, at any rate at first, by the keeping of a dozen fowls as by keeping a hundred. Unless he is dogged by unprecedented luck, there are certain to be losses in the first year. Losses through faults in incubating, mortality among young chickens, devasta¬ tion by rats and other enemies. Wastage by unsuitable or uneconomical feeding, errors in the treatment of stock birds, too much attention paid to well-meaning but mis¬ taken advice from other people, and many other wastages that, even with the most detailed theoretical knowledge, it is impossible for him to foresee. Let him, therefore, reduce the possibilities of loss to the minimum. And in poultry keeping this does not so much imply a reduction of possible gains as a similar proceeding would do in most other businesses.