The routine of work on such a farm is very exacting. The fowls can do so little for themselves and require so much extra care that the poultry keeper knows from the start that he cannot make his business pay unless he gets a very high production. So all his efforts are devoted to this end. He uses labor-saving appliances, carefully systematizes his work, and by great effort often succeeds in making a fair profit for a few years. It is at this stage of his progress that the poultry keeper of this class does the boasting which misleads others. Then things begin to go wrong with his stock. His eggs do not hatch well, because his chickens, while nominally on free range on a farm, have really been no better off than chickens reared under ordinary conditions in town. His chickens do not thrive, because they are weak and the land is tainted. He himself is worn out with long hours of work and no holidays, and if he does not realize his mistake and close out the business in time, it is only a question of continuing until his income and credit combined no longer suffice to keep the business going.
This in brief has been the history of all special poultry farms where intensive methods were used, except the duck farms and the several classes to be described farther on in this chapter. By no means all succeed to even the extent described, because a great many people who go into the business have so little capital that they have to give up the business before they have been able to make it show a profit. When the owners have capital, plants are sometimes operated for years at a loss, but it is very rare indeed that a poultry farm of this kind (except in the classes to be described later) is continued for more than seven or eight years, and few of them last five years. Those who wish to make a poultry business permanent must adopt other methods.
Broiler Growing
The desire for what is rare and costly is a common trait in human character. In nothing is it more plainly displayed than in the demand for food products out of their natural season. An article which in its season of abundance is a staple article of diet, within the means of all but the very poorest, at its season of scarcity becomes a luxury which only the wealthy can afford.
Before cold-storage methods had been brought to high efficiency, there was a period in the latter part of the winter and the early spring when young chickens were very scarce. The number that could be hatched with hens to meet a demand at this season was small, and those who were hatching autumn and winter chickens by the natural method found it more profitable to keep them to sell as roasters late in the spring and early in the summer.
The "broiler craze." A little before 1890, artificial incubators being then first brought to a perfection which made them popular, some poultry keepers began to hatch chickens in the winter to meet the demand for early broilers. Those who were successful made a very good profit on what chickens they had ready to sell while the prices were high. Most of them operated in a very small way, taking up this work simply for occupation when they had nothing else to do. Many were gardeners who had just about enough slack time, after the harvest of one year was over, to hatch and grow one lot of broilers before beginning their regular spring work.
These people were not under any delusions about the limitations on this line of production. They knew that the demand for very small chickens at very high prices was limited and easily satisfied. But, as usual, the published accounts of what they were doing set a great many people to figuring the possibilities of profit from such a business conducted on a large scale. For a few years the broiler craze affected nearly every one interested in poultry keeping. Thousands who never engaged in it were restrained only because of lack of capital or inability to adapt it to their circumstances. Many people who had been through several unsatisfactory ventures in poultry keeping thought that they saw in this the one sure road to wealth, and began to make plans to grow broilers in large quantities. Besides these business ventures there were countless small ones, sometimes conducted under the most unsuitable conditions. People tried to grow broilers in living rooms, in attics, in all sorts of unheated outbuildings, and in house cellars to which the daylight hardly penetrated.
Present condition of broiler growing. The production of broilers as a specialty did not last long. The improvement in cold-storage methods soon made it possible for speculators to carry over large quantities of summer chickens, and the poultry keepers in other lines could easily arrange to produce all the fresh broilers that could be sold at a good profit.