The Dollar Hen

BY
FORMERLY POULTRYMAN AT KANSAS EXPERIMENT STATION; LATER IN CHARGE OF THE COMMERCIAL POULTRY INVESTIGATION OF THE UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE
SYRACUSE
NATIONAL POULTRY MAGAZINE
1911
COPYRIGHT, 1911,
NATIONAL POULTRY PUBLISHING COMPANY
Twenty-five years ago there were in print hundreds of complete treatises on human diseases and the practice of medicine. Notwithstanding the size of the book-shelves or the high standing of the authorities, one might have read the entire medical library of that day and still have remained in ignorance of the fact that out-door life is a better cure for consumption than the contents of a drug store. The medical professor of 1885 may have gone prematurely to his grave because of ignorance of facts which are to-day the property of every intelligent man.
There are to-day on the book-shelves of agricultural colleges and public libraries, scores of complete works on Poultry and hundreds of minor writings on various phases of the industry. Let the would-be poultryman master this entire collection of literature and he is still in ignorance of facts and principles, a knowledge of which in better developed industries would be considered prime necessities for carrying on the business.
As a concrete illustration of the above statement, I want to point to a young man, intelligent, enterprising, industrious, and a graduate of the best known agricultural college poultry course in the country. This lad invested some $18,000 of his own and his friends' money in a poultry plant. The plant was built and the business conducted in accordance with the plans and principles of the recognized poultry authorities. To-day the young man is bravely facing the proposition of working on a salary in another business, to pay back the debts of honor resulting from his attempt to apply in practice the teaching of our agricultural colleges and our poultry bookshelves.
The experience just related did not prove disastrous from some single item of ignorance or oversight; the difficulty was that the cost of growing and marketing the product amounted to more than the receipts from its sale. This poultry farm, like the surgeon's operation, was successful, but the patient died.