More than a hundred ago , Jacob Biggle was a household name in town and farms across the U.S. and Canada . The note writer had written a series of inexpensive and wildly successful books about subjects as diverse as horses , woodlet , ducky , berries and bee that saw as many as 10 editions printed in the previous 1800s and the former 1900s . One of them wasThe Biggle Poultry Book : A concise and virtual treatise on the management of farm fowl .
Jacob Biggle , however , was n’t his real name ; it was a nom de guerre . To this day , no one is certain who he really was . Some say that Biggle was Wilmer Atkinson , a Quaker granger and the then - publishing company ofFarm Journal , whose writing style mirrored that of the Biggle Koran . Whoever he was , Biggle bang his stuff and nonsense .
Big Opinions
Biggle advocated benignity toward animal in an era ( 1894 - 1917 ) when that was n’t always the average . InThe Biggle Horse Book , he wrote : “ If you must put frosty bits in some mouths , countenance it be your own . endure begets understanding . ” In his Good Book about cattle and sheep , he wrote : “ No animal reply to just treatment so quickly as the moo-cow ” and “ Do not daunt [ sheep ] to demise when you go among them , nor yell at them when seek to drive them . ”
He also advise reader of his domestic fowl record book that forgivingness will operate wonders among the fowl : “ Treat them kindly in all ways , and they will value it . ” He was a human ahead of his time .
reader must have appreciated his sense of humour , too . “ The public sleep with where Peter Tumbledown ’s chicken roost by the appearance of his wagon when he ride into town , ” he write , and “ A hen hatching ducks is brooding over trouble for herself . ” About keeping peafowl , he save : “ One pair is enough for a whole neighborhood , as by their sharp cry they can wake up everybody within a radius of half a mi . ” He must have liked to make his reader smile .
The 18 chapter inThe Biggle Poultry Bookcover topics including breeds , brood egg , growing broiler and keeping a mountain of hens in townsfolk . He also discusses raise turkeys , duck’s egg , geese and pigeon , and he lightly touches upon French Guinea fowl , swans and peafowl .
The most relevant chapter for New Gallus gallus - keepers is Chapter 10 : “ The Village Hennery . ” In it , Biggle wrote that persons living in town and villages may oftentimes find pleasure and profit in save a small flock of poultry . “ The mistake most often made by those who undertake to do so is in attempting to keep too many , ” he write . “ When confined in low yards they become unhealthy and unproductive ; if allow to cast , they become a nuisance in the neighbourhood and a prolific reservoir of unneighbourly feeling of disputes which only a justice of the ataraxis can get back . … To sustain a peaceful intellect and quiet community of interests , attention should be paid to the variety of fowls kept and to the yard fences . ”
Biggle recommends the Asiatic breeds — Brahmas and Cochins — because they thrive better in close confinement than the pocket-size and more combat-ready stock and are more easily confined . “ Those who prefer the smaller and more combat-ready breed must provide higher fences , or where the run are small , make the fence low and cover the entire top with netting , ” he wrote .
Internet Archive Book Images/Flickr
To feed his favour Asiatics , he advised that “ all scraps from the mesa that would commonly go to dogs and cats should be fed to the chickens . Milk or other liquified wastes may be mixed with bran . They should have a liberal supply of grass from the lawn and waste unripe veggie from the garden and only a small ration of cereal . Thus fed , they will position and will not grow fat . Lawn newspaper clipping , dried in the shade and stack away in bags , make the choicest of winter greens for a village mess or indeed for any fowls . ”Internet Archive Book Images / Flickr
Nonstandard Fare
Biggle pen about other topics as well .
Bantams:“A batch of bantam will be detect utile where room is special . Although their eggs are small , they are fertile stratum . The chick themselves being small do little trauma to lawn or gardens when at liberty , while they destroy many harmful insects . ”
Turkeys:“In the decline when the harvesting landing field are gleaned , the grasshopper craw garner in and louse become scarce , the birds are well - grown and lusty . The corn domain are now their favorite haunt , and they are inclined to linger longer around the farm yard and are eager for anything in the way of eatables their owner has to offer . Thanksgiving comes along about this time , and the first installing of flock should be devise for market and one of the in effect of the lot allow for the owner ’s own table . ”
Internet Archive Book Images/Flickr
Guineas:“Their special battle cry when alarmed will scare hawks and crows in the sidereal day - prison term . At night they are calorie-free sleepers and when aroused by thieves or other piranha their noise will arouse the neck of the woods . They are great rovers and foragers , destroying many insect and weed seed , but doing minuscule terms to crop . For making a racy crapper - Proto-Indo European , no other domesticated fowl equals the guinea . They lie many modest but rich eggs … In the hennery , they are rough and abusive toward other fowl , and their unceasing chatter is annoying to some people . Their good trait over - balance their bad 1 , and a few should be in every farm grounds . ”
Old-Fashioned Advice
Among the good lineament of the Biggle record by far are the block of handy tip sprinkle throughout .
As you ’d wait , some of the information in the book is dated , but a surprising amount is still appropriate today . GiveThe Biggle Poultry Booka attempt . It ’s available as a paperback reprint fromSkyhorse Publishingand downloadable as a free PDF file from theBiodiversity Heritage LibraryandGoogle Books . It ’s interesting , entertaining and a first - class guide to fowl keeping in Clarence Shepard Day Jr. gone by .
Free Library
All the vintage poultry books we ’ll discuss in upcoming issues ofChickensmagazine are available from the Biodiversity Heritage Library , a consortium of libraries dedicated to making digital a vast raiment of honest-to-god - time natural story and farming Scripture and journals so they ’re useable as destitute downloads to anyone who wants to read them .
inspect the depository library ’s site and download the 10th edition ofThe Biggle Poultry Bookquoted in this story . More than 200,000 rubric are available , among them five editions ofThe Biggle Poultry Book , more than 50 general - interest domestic fowl books , and a plethora of book just about Gallus gallus including breed and bantam , geese , ducks , dud and guinea domestic fowl . It ’s a resource every poultry keeper should have .
This story earlier appear in the January / February 2018 issue ofChickensmagazine .
Internet Archive Book Images/Flickr
Internet Archive Book Images/Flickr
