Roaster Growing
Description of a good roaster. To roast nicely, a fowl must be full-grown and well filled out, but young, soft-meated, and fat. A fowl is "ripe" for a choice roaster for only a short period after arriving at maturity. When a pullet has laid a few eggs, her flesh becomes harder and is never again as tender and juicy as it was before she laid an egg. When the spurs of a cockerel begin to harden and to grow a long, sharp point, and the bird becomes boisterous and quarrelsome, the flesh becomes dry and tough and is not fit for roasting.
General and special supplies. From July, when the earliest farm chickens are large enough for roasting, until about the first of February, when the last of the late-hatched farm chickens disappear from the markets, there are nearly always enough very good roasting chickens in the general market receipts to supply the demand for that class and grade of poultry. Then for four or five months there are no fresh roasting chickens on the market except those grown especially for this trade. This line of poultry culture was developed first near Philadelphia, in southern New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania, about forty years ago. The chickens were hatched with hens in the autumn and early winter, each grower having only a few hundred. They were sold not only in Philadelphia but in New York and Boston, and in smaller Eastern cities where there was a demand for them. They were, and still are, commonly known as Philadelphia chickens.
Fig. 111. Massachusetts soft-roaster plant
Large roaster plants. After incubators came into common use, the production of Philadelphia chickens increased, but a more remarkable development of that line of production took place in Plymouth County, Massachusetts, just about the time the broiler craze started. The growing of winter chickens had been carried on to some extent in southern New England in the same way as in the vicinity of Philadelphia, but the local supply was small and irregular until artificial methods were adopted. Then, quite suddenly, the industry developed extensively in the vicinity of Norwell, Hanover, and Rockland. Its growth was remarkable, both because of the number of people who were successful on a comparatively large scale, and because it attracted almost no attention outside of this district until long after it had become a well-established local industry.
Fig. 112. Incubator cellar
The methods of the roaster growers in this district are very intensive, but as originally developed their business was not a continuous line of intensive poultry culture, nor is it continuous now except in some cases. For many years after the business began, the growers bought the eggs that they incubated from farmers whose flocks were kept under good conditions and were strong and vigorous; but as the numbers engaged in growing winter chickens increased, the supply of eggs from the farms was not sufficient, and some of the roaster growers began to keep hens to supply a part of the eggs they used. Later some produced all the eggs for hatching that they needed for their own use, and a few sold to others also. This, however, can be done only by those having quite large farms. Some of the most successful growers have only a few acres of land and do not attempt to keep breeding fowls.
Hatching begins in August or September and is continued until all the chickens that can be handled are hatched. If the eggs hatch well from the start, a large grower may have his houses full by December, but usually it takes until January to complete hatching, and sometimes it takes longer. The price paid for eggs for hatching is only a little above the price of market eggs, and the buyer takes all the risks of poor hatches. The chickens are kept in warm brooder houses as long as they need artificial heat, then they are removed to cold brooder houses of the same type or to colony houses. Those who have land enough use mostly colony houses. While in the heated brooder houses the chickens are fed in the regular way—with mixed ground grains, either dry or moistened, and small whole or cracked grains. After they leave the brooder houses they have cracked corn, beef scrap, and water always before them; for green food they have cabbage or the winter rye or grass growing on the land.
Fig. 113. House used for growing roasting chickens
Fig. 114. Group of houses like that in Fig. [113]
As the object of the grower is to have chickens that will grow large and remain soft as long as possible, the breeds used are principally Light Brahmas and Plymouth Rocks, although when eggs of these varieties cannot be obtained in sufficient quantities, Wyandottes are used. The cockerels are caponized when they are about two months old. A capon does not grow a comb or spurs, nor does it crow. If a perfect capon, it remains always soft-meated and may grow very large, though it does not, as is commonly supposed, grow larger than a cockerel within the time it is usually kept before being killed. An imperfect capon will after a time grow a comb and short spurs and, though sterile, becomes harder in flesh than a perfect capon. An imperfect capon is technically called a slip.
Fig. 115. Petaluma egg farm. (Photograph from Bureau of Animal Industry, United States Department of Agriculture)
About the first of March some of the earliest pullets may begin to lay. From that time all the pullets that begin to lay, and the slips as they appear, are marketed; all others are kept, because the grower realizes the largest profit on those that can be marketed in June and July, when the price is highest. By the middle of July, at the latest, everything is sold. The poultry keeper then begins to prepare for the next crop of chickens by taking up all his fences, plowing land that is not in grass, and planting it with winter rye or cabbage or some late garden crop. Rye and cabbage are preferred, because the rye will remain green all winter and furnish green food for chickens that have access to it, and the cabbage makes the best of green food for the little chickens in the brooder houses. It is just as good for the others, too, but not many of the poultry keepers grow enough to continue feeding it to them throughout the winter.
While the land on these plants is heavily stocked with poultry, the birds are on it only half of the season,—when vegetation grows freely,—and during the remainder of the season a great deal of manure is removed from the soil by gross-feeding crops like rye and cabbage. So the land may be heavily stocked longer than it could be if fowls were on it all the time. The chickens grown in this way do not usually grow so large as those that are given more room, but they are grown at less cost and are as large as the market demands. By this method the land will carry a large crop of chickens year after year for many years, yet it finally becomes so contaminated that chickens do not thrive on it.
Fig. 116. Group of houses on a Petaluma egg farm. (Photograph from Bureau of Animal Industry, United States Department of Agriculture)