With 8 pound roasters at 30 cents, we have an expense account about as follows: cost of production to broiler stage, 30 cents as previously given. An additional food cost of 10 cents per pound of chicken flesh would still leave a margin of $1.40, so, for an income of $1,200, only about 860 birds need be raised, a proposition not beyond the capacity of one man to handle.
Allowing a spread of five hatching periods, the number of eggs required at once would be one-twelfth that demanded by the broiler farm. As it is, the roaster grower finds trouble in getting good eggs and is obliged to pay 50 cents a dozen for them, but his want is within the region of possibility.
The South Shore roaster district is an example of an industry built up by specialization and co-operation. But in this sense I do not mean co-operation in production, but that the product is handled by a few dealers and has become well known so that the brand sells readily at an advanced price. To a beginner in the South Shore district, the numerous successes and failures around him cannot help but be of great benefit. The South Shore roaster district of Massachusetts is the best example of specialized community production of poultry flesh that we have in the United States. It is only rivaled by the districts in the south of England and in France.
In Chapter III the writer takes up fully the community production of eggs. The reason I have gone into this matter in regard to eggs rather than roasters, is because the egg production is much the greater industry, and, whereas the soft roaster is at a premium only in a few Boston shops, high grade eggs are universally recognized and in demand. Many of the economies, especially concerning incubation, would apply equally well in both communities. I expect to see the time when chicken flesh shall be produced with these more advanced methods in many "South Shore" communities.
Too Much Competition in Fancy Poultry.
The various types of chicken farming are classified by what is made the leading sales product. This will depend wholly upon what is done with the female chicks that are hatched. If they are sold as broilers it is a broiler plant; if as roasters, it is a roaster plant; if as stock, it is a fancy or breeding stock business, but if kept for laying the proposition is an egg farm, and all other products are by-products. These by-products are to be carefully considered, and sold at the greatest possible price, but their production is incidental to the production of the main crop.
Of the fancy poultry business as a main issue it must be said that it is certainly a poor policy to start out to make a living doing what hundreds of other people are only too glad to spend money in doing. Just as a homeless girl in a great city is beaten out in the struggle for existence by competition with girls who have good homes, and are working for chocolate money, so the man starting out as a poultry fancier is certainly working at great odds in competition with the professional men, farmers and poultry raisers whose income from fancy stock is meant to buy Christmas presents and not to pay grocery bills.
To enter the fancy poultry business, one should take up poultry breeding in a small way, while working at another occupation, or he may take up commercial poultry production, learn to produce stock in large quantities and at a low productive cost, after which any breeding stock business he may secure will be added profit. The fancier will find the cost of production as given for commercial purposes very instructive, but if he operates in a small way he should expect to find his productive costs increased unless he chooses to count his own labor as of little or no value. That every chicken fancier also has in a small way commercial products to sell, goes without saying. These, indeed, together with his sales of high-priced stock, may pull him through with a total profit, even though his production cost is great, but every fancier should take a pride in making the sales at commercial rates pay for their cost of production.
If the reader has received the impression from the present discussion that fancy poultry breeding always proves unprofitable, he certainly has failed to get the key-note of the situation. There are numbers of fancy poultry breeders making incomes of several thousand dollars per year, but these are old breeders and well-known men.
There is another type of poultry fancier who is more commercial in his methods, but whose work lacks the personal enthusiasm and artistic touch of the regular fancier. I refer to the band wagon style of breeder who gets out a general catalog in which are pictured acres of poultry yards with fences as straight as the draughtsman's rule can make them. Such men do a big business. They may carry a part or all of the breeding stock on a central poultry plant and farm out the eggs, contracting to buy back the stock in the fall, or the poultry farm may be a myth and the manager may simply sell the product of the neighboring farmers who raise it under contract.