1906.] DISCUSSION. 115 



poultry business to stay. We are perfectly satisfied with what 

 we are getting. We get all we deserve and all we work for 

 in the poultry business. If there is any failure in any way, it 

 is not the fault of the hen. It is the fault of the keeper. 



Professor Beach. Then are we to understand that you 

 do not know the per cent, of eggs obtained ? 



Mr. TiLLiNGHAST. No, I do not. 



Professor Beach. Is it a fact that it is as large as during 

 the summer months ? 



Mr. TiLLiNGHAST. In what I have said I have been trying 

 to tell what I would do. I am not here telling what I am doing. 

 I am telling what I would do. I will tell you this, however, 

 that I would not be afraid to wager that I could take hens, 

 taking my own pullets, and commencing the first of November, 

 I could get a half yield from that time to the first of April. I 

 would be willing to put up a wager that I could do it. I know 

 I can get results by working for them. But I am not saying 

 that we are getting that. I am telling these boys what I would 

 do if I was a boy again, knowing what I do now about the 

 poultry business. 



Question. Did you ever know of any person who suc- 

 ceeded for five years in getting one hundred dollars per acre 

 from a fruit farm, or an average of a dollar each for ten 

 thousand hens? 



Mr. TiLLiNGHAST. I ncvcr knew a party that kept ten 

 thousand hens. I have known a good many who have engaged 

 in poultry culture on the old style. That is, with long house* 

 or in little pens. Those methods have all been written up in 

 books and papers. I am not trying to follow those methods. 

 They knew nothing about the methods I have described. We 

 often read or hear of some rich New Yorker who has gone out 

 into the country and proceeded to establish a big poultry plant, 

 putting in a considerable investment, and organizing it upon 

 a large scale, but in a few years the plant has been abandoned. 

 Now, as I said, lots of farms keep a flock of hens and they 



