SEVENTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART X. 649 



The housewife also gathers what eggs there might be from an indefinite 

 number of hens and if she but have a goodly number of eggs for the weekly- 

 marketing, she is content. Content with a seventy-flve-egg hen when she 

 might have one hundred and fifty to two hundred eggs per hen, with no 

 more feed or cost for production. 



Weed out the old hens. Early hatched pullets are the ones that fill 

 the egg basket when winter prices are high. That is the hen to keep. 

 One year old hens lay better eggs for hatching, but not so many as pullets. 

 After that age most hens do not pay as layers and should be marketed. 

 Then what does the farmer get? With hens of every size and color, can 

 he expect to receive as much per pound as the man with birds of fair 

 weight? Choose for the farm a bird that lays and a bird that weighs. 



Keep only the best layers in your flock. There is as much difference in 

 liens as in cows. Select your best to breed from, and keep no others. 

 SO'me people think a hen is a hen, and as long as she is not a dead hen 

 she will produce eggs profitably. Not so. Hens are like humans; some 

 are not worth the food they consume. Weed these out, keep the best layers, 

 and try to improve them, and if you take a genuine interest in them the 

 chances are you will soon be dissatisfied with anything short of the best 

 and you soon become a fancier. . Meantime if you have a mixed flock, 

 and do not wish to dispose of them at once and start with pure bred 

 poultry, improve the laying qualities of your mixed stock. Get a pure 

 "bred cock bird from some fancier who has a good laying strain. Mate 

 him with your mixed birds and the next generation will be better layers. 

 Remember the male bird is half your flock. You can get a pure bred male 

 bird that is not good enough in color perhaps to reproduce his own 

 breed but is in other respects a good bird and just what you need to in- 

 troduce new blood into your mixed flock. 



My plea to you is better poultry and more of it. 



Begin with thoroughbred stock. My reason is simply this: The 

 poultry man expects, and gets one hundred and fifty to two hundred 

 eggs per hen yearly as compared with seventy-five eggs laid yearly by 

 the farmers' hens. In July and August when spring chickens are bring- 

 ing twelve to fifteen cents per pound on the market, the poultry man 

 has a fine lot averaging in weight four to five pounds while the farmer 

 must wait until September or October and receive only six or seven 

 cents per pound. Thoroughbred poultry will always make a good show- 

 ing for the amount of food consumed while mongrel stock will not. 



To start with thoroughbred poultry it is not necessary to invest 

 a small fortune, as many believe. Begin small. Select the breed you 

 are going to raise, and learn all you can about it. The first year get a 

 setting of eggs from some reliable breeder who handles the kind of 

 stock you wish. Or, if you can buy a good hen of him, better still. 

 Take good care of these eggs or pens, whatever it may be, and you will 

 be surprised how soon you will own a very fine flock of thoroughbred 

 chickens. Each year select your best layers which are good in shape, 

 color and size, and breed from these. The advantage gained by using 

 selected layers is that in a few years you can develop two hundred-egg 

 hens. 



