Disinfecting.
My neighbors had become much interested in the business and often visited me, and were not backward in giving their opinions. They predicted failure for me, giving as reasons that the market would soon be glutted with so much of that kind of stuff, for poultry never could be as good grown in that unnatural way, and that if I kept on growing those ducks in the same yard, year after year, the land would eventually get poisoned, and then disease would clean me out.
But I had thought this thing all over before laying out my yards. I knew that reversing land and cropping it would disinfect it, so a crop of ducks is always followed by a crop of something else; and thus I succeed each season in getting two crops of ducks and two crops of either rye, barley, or oats, so that the land has not been poisoned, and is still growing its complement of large, fat ducks every year, and as I have set it to plum trees, it is beginning to yield fine, luscious plums. Neither is the market glutted, as the demand is far in excess of the supply. The way of growing does not seem to be any objection, as the marketmen are willing to pay me, at least, two to four cents per pound more than they can possibly get for those grown in the natural way.
Perhaps a word here would not be amiss regarding the merits of artificially and naturally-grown poultry for fancy and market purposes. This is a vital question, and it is as well for the public to fully understand this thing now, as well as its origin. There is many a person who has been thoroughly convinced of the great advantages and the economy of the artificial over the natural way of doing it, and who would gladly have started in the business, but was deterred by the prevailing opinion that artificially-grown birds were always deficient in plumage, and could never win at a show, and that the flesh was inferior for table use and could not find a ready sale. It is as well to explode this thing now, and expose its utter fallacy. There is not a shadow of doubt but that much poor poultry has been put upon the market by people who have attempted its culture in the artificial way by growing hundreds of ducks and chicks in the same limited space that they formerly used for a dozen with an old hen.
These, of course, could not be otherwise than poor and the mortality great. Another reason: the fancy business in poultry is fast being overdone. The best breeds are now scattered far and wide over the entire country. There is not the demand for them that there has been, because good birds can be obtained nearer home. Many of our old and well-known fanciers are making frantic but vain efforts to keep their business up to its former standard. They have suffered considerably from competition with artificially-grown birds, and they roundly assert that it is an unnatural method, that the conditions are not right, that it affects the growth and plumage of the bird in such a manner as to preclude its ever taking a first-class premium at our shows.
Now if they can convince the public that naturally grown birds can capture premiums, and they grow all their birds in the natural way, it is easy to see how their trade would be increased.
Now, I never could see how the old hen could impart vigor to her chicks by imparting lice, or how the increased contributions of filth from the old hen, united to that from the chicks, could ever make the conditions more favorable than that from the chicks alone. It can no longer be denied that the artificially-grown fowls are fast coming to the front,—a place which they already occupy in the market. Knapp Bros., Fabius, N. Y., the greatest prize winners on White Leghorns in the country, grow their birds artificially. We could mention many others who are doing equally well. Our own Pekin ducks have, for many generations, been hatched and grown artificially, and today, for size, symmetry, and beauty of plumage they stand unrivaled in North America. They have won first from Canada to the Gulf, and have never been defeated. Three times during the past ten years we have been obliged to enlarge market boxes to accommodate the increased size of our birds; and yet we have bred only from our own stock. A number of times I have procured winning birds at the Pennsylvania and Western State Fairs, with a view to a change of blood, only to cast the birds aside on their arrival here, as I could not breed from them without deteriorating my flock in size. If this is the result of artificial growing and of in-breeding, I shall keep right on.