EGGS AND POULTRY AS A SOURCE OF WEALTH ! !*

THEsE notes of admiration are not ours, but if they had not been wed, we should have felt inclined to remedy the omission, for

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* Eggs and Poullr y as a Source of Wealth!! Oliver's Series. London: Virtue and Go.

TOlaillf. An Original sod Practical Guide to their Breeding, Bearing Feeding, sad Exhibition. By Elizabeth Watts. London: F. Warns Suit (;o.

they usher in two wonderful discoveries, which ought to revolu- tionize all our poultry yards. Cocks can be dispensed with in the breeding of chickens, and the year contains sixteen months in which to rear them. These are the strong points of the little volume that offers to lead us on to riches, but there are others of scarcely less value. Six months, or so, of winter does not check the production of eggs and chickens, and three-farthings a head weekly is sufficient, not only to feed, but to fatten up fowls for , market. Granting these postulates, we may well join with its writer in wondering at the supineness of mankind, and in protest- ing that dear butchers' meat and narrow incomes are solely due to their want of " ordinary intelligence and industry."

Two plans are set before us by which we can realize from 25 to 200 per cent. in outlay. We confess that under our prevailing climatic arrangements, and under what we have been accustomed to consider the normal conditions of chicken, as of other animal existence, we do not see our way, but we will turn to our bene- volent guide. He says, " Expend one hundred pounds in the purchase of a hundred hens—cocks not mentioned—and in the erection of suitable buildings," &c. We at first imagined that perhaps our author had here followed the example of a quoted but anonymous authority, who advises the sale yearly of " one thousand old hens, including a proportionate number of cocks ;" but on further investigation, we found his calculations all based on our possession of one hundred hens. Having thus established our poultry yard on an entirely original basis, a yearly sum of 2331. will cover all expenses except of food. On this point the calculation runs thus :— "Food for 100 sitting hens at 10d. a day, 15/. ; food for 1,000 chickens at £38. 4d. a day, 1501. It will be observed that the cost of feeding 1,000 chickens only for the year is taken into calculation, although 4,000 aro fattened. The reason is that only 1,000 are in hand at one time ; as soon as the second 1,000 is hatched the first is disposed of, and so on with the third and fourth broods."

It will perhaps be also observed that our author's calculation is. peculiar ; four broods of four months each are to be got into twelve months, otherwise the outlying brood must starve ; while the year is reckoned at sixteen months for rearing purposes, enough theoretically, but not practically useful. If the year would be so obligingly expansive and contractile, if some twenty much needed cocks could be obtained gratis, and would eat no food, if chickens would cost no more to fatten than is here stated, and if a ready market for chickens wholesale at 2s. 6d. each could be found, and at twelve for feeding, a mode of computation convenient our yearly expenditure of 298/. might bring us in 4701., but, with the other four thousand to feed besides the purchase and keep of twenty cocks, with a probable loss of at least one-fifth of our chicks either in birth or infancy, and with the necessity (according to Mrs. Watts' experience) of laying out about twice as much as specified upon barley, Indian corn, and meal, so far from grasping wealth at the end of the first year, we shall find ourselves landed in a pleasing deficit of some sixty pounds. After all, we fear the most solid edifice that can be raised upon egg-shells is a château en Espagne. On a small scale fowls may not return 200 per cent., as they are represented to do in our author's advice to people of small means, where the number of hens is limited to five, and months to twelve ; but, if the keeper's circumstances are at all suitable to his task, they will always be profitable, as well as a great source of pleasure. Fowls require much more space in comparison to their size than other domestic animals ; here, as well as iu the damp of our English atmosphere, lies the great difficulty in the way of chicken farming on a large and correspondingly profitable scale. Space for a few fowls can easily be found, but space they must have. Crowding destroys their health and productiveness, even if they are not altogether swept off by contagious disorders : - "I have always found them," says Mrs. Watts, "most prosperous when the number was not great, and when they wore divided into small companies. Many trials have been made, both in France and iq England, of rearing poultry by wholesale for tho supply of the market, and each attempt, if watched for a number of years, has been brought to an end. This circumstance bears out the experience given above. Of late, again, much interest has been excited by this question ; and extensive, and apparently excellent arrangements have been made to insure suc- cess. The, results will be once more watched with interest, but a trial of some years is necessary before any opinion can fairly be given."

One adventurous individual has started an establishment of ten thousand birds, feeding them upon horseflesh. The notion is not appetizing, even though corn does supplant horseflesh for the last few weeks of fattening. We are tolerably sure also that in the end he will find this diet (unnatural as it is) so injurious to the fowls fed upon it, as to prove less remunerative than more whole- some but dearer food. He reckons that each hen brings him in fifteen shillings a year, deducting failures, a remuneration of at least 50 per cent. on her first cost and food.

On one point we entirely agree with the writer of Eggs and Poultry as a Source of Wealth, and that is on the desirability of every one who has a bit of garden ground to spare keeping fowls for his own use, or for the supply of the neighbourhood ; the dearness and scarcity of fresh eggs is a standing nuisance, and ought to be abated. Mrs. Watts' suggestion of a middleman, employing cottagera to rear chickens up to a certain age, giving them a fair remunerative price, and taking upon himself the most expensive part of the fattening, is worthy of attention ; for, after all, in spite of the golden prospects held out in this little book, we believe that, to quote Mrs. Watts' capital poultry guide once more, "The best caterers to our markets are, and will continue to be, cottagers who rear a few chickens of a good sort, and that there are many more cottagers, and persons not far removed from cottagers in financial matters, than now practise this branch of industry, who would be glad of the money returned by a brood or two of early chickens, especially as the work is begun and ended in three months or so, and takes up very little time, much wanted for more important work."

As an encouragement to those who, desirous of eating their own home-laid eggs, are yet certain that they have no conveniences for the keeping of fowls, Mrs. Watts gives her readers her own experience. It is curious, as showing from what small beginnings the most gigantic results can spring. One of the first importers of Cochin-Chinas, and editor of the poultry department in the Field, began her career with the stock in trade of four hens, a cock, and a kitchen table :—

" When the fowls came we had no home to give them, and could only set them down in a small enclosure by the side of a semi-detached suburban house. A house by roosting time was a necessity, and to work we went. Three young girls were the builders, and all the building materials that could be mustered were an old kitchen table, some sacks, and a few boards. The kitchen table was set on end a few feet from the corner angle of the enclosure; that shaped out the house. Boards and old sacks were arranged for roof and front, a door was dispensed, with, and the perch and nest were fixed in time. I have often wished since I have reared chickens by hundreds that I had taken a sketch of that primitive hen-house, just to show amateurs with all possible appliances, how very few are necessary to ensure success. Those five fowls, in an enclosure measuring twenty-six feet by ten or twelve, with only the shelter of a few rough boards laid to- gether, with plenty of interstices, throve well and produced well; and, looking back to that time with the aid of the experience of after years, I attribute the success with them to very simple causes. First, the number of fowls was not too great for the space allotted to them ; second, the earth was clean and pure ; it had never been used for poultry before, and so made for them just the kind of home in which fowls aro sure to do well. Third, we had not been accustomed to the coat of feeding stock, and we did not buy food lavishly, but used it with due economy. Fourth, the new pets were a delight to us, and we attended to them ourselves regularly and well."

Ducks are much more easily kept, as they require less room for exercise, and are content with a sunken tub for bathing in, in default of a pond. They eat almost anything, and fatten easily ; but the difference in the quality of their eggs will always prevent their becoming favourites. Geese require much grass, or common land, to feed over, and are best reared in large flocks. On their virtues the writer of our first little pamphlet grows eloquent. Turkeys and ducks, indeed, receive some share of his notice ; but the third volume of Oliver's Series * is, in fact, a paean in praise of the goose. We are sorry to say he defends the plucking of his favourites, on the plea that as birds lose their feathers yearly, " to anticipate this operation of nature is simply to turn it to the best account," adding, " An old goose plucked three times a year, at intervals of seven weeks, but not while laying, will furnish about a pound of feathers, the value of which will average four shillings." Geese, then, it is to be sup- posed, moult three times in the year, for the especial benefit of literature and the feather trade.

There is evidently something congenial to our author in the theme of this continuation of his benevolent labours. Goose-quill in hand, he looks back through the long vista of history, and gives his readers this exquisite version of the Capitolian story :—

"For we are told that the geese had been taken to the fortress of the Roman Capitol after the terrible battle of Allis, which opened access to the Gauls under Breams. During seven months the victor camped around the ruins of the great city, awaiting the day when the blockade of a fortress built on a mountain would compel the garrison to surrender through famine. A young Roman passed through the Gallic lines without being perceived, scaled the Tarpeian Rock on its most accessible side, and returned by the same road to Andrea, where he presented himself before the Senator Consultus, who named him Dictator."

Pecksniff's desire to know Mrs. Todgers' opinion of a wooden leg

Trap. By the Author of Eggs and Poullry as a Source of Wealth: Oliver's

is as nothing to ours to learn our author's notion of a "Senator Consultus." Could he not explain it in some future number of Oliver's Series? Our shilling, at least, shall not be wanting.