FOURTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK — PART VII. 507 



cooked or steamed feed you can surely increase the egg product at the 

 time of year that eggs sell for the most money. 



Second. I give this table of foods, not as the best one for all, but 

 as a good one for most people, especially the amateur. If your market, 

 location and surroundings enable you to substitute potatoes, turnips, 

 beets, cabbage, etc., for some of the items, well and good; I have no quar- 

 rel with you and shall be glad to hear of your success. Or if you can ob- 

 tain fresh bones from the butcher and will grind them, you can dispense 

 with much of the cut-bone and beef-scrap I have prescribed and rediffce 

 materially the cost. 



Third. You may not be able to purchase in small quantities the 

 feeds I have prescribed at the prices named. Feed promises to be cheap 

 this year and eggs will surely be high. This article is written in western 

 Missouri, and a prominent stock feeder in looking over the table said: 

 "You have those grain prices 50 per cent higher than is necessary for 

 this section this year." Now, you may need to pay higher prices than 

 those specified, but if so you are in a locality where you can sell you" 

 eggs higher than "16 cents per pound." At our Beaver Hill farm we 

 believe that our feeds cost us perhaps 25 per cent higher than our esti- 

 mate, but we will realize more than 25 per cent advance on the price of 

 eggs, for at no time this summer did we sell eggs lower than 20 cent3 

 per dozen, and in September people were coaxing for our eggs at 24 

 cents per dozen, or "16 cents per pound." Right here in the country 

 districts of western Missouri eggs are selling now for 18 cents per 

 dozen. 



THE PRACTICAL APPLICATIOX. 



The problem I am asking you to demonstrate is the possibility of 

 starting November 1st with forty-five pure-bred pullets of an "eggs- 

 early-and-often" strain and on the rations I prescribe, or one of equal 

 cost and merit, make them produce in 360 days 240 eggs each, "two, 

 eggs each three days." 



CAN IT BE DONE? 



There are many to rise and cry: ''That's all theory; it can't be 

 done." Well, such people are the ones who will also say "A hen can't 

 possibly consume sixteen times her own weight in one year, no more 

 than she can lay six times her weight of eggs in a year." Well. I'm 

 not afraid of a calamity howler nor of the man who continually decries 

 the theories of others but has no good practices of his own to present. 

 Nearly twenty years ago the writer of this article experimented for a 

 full year with one pen each of Brown Leghorns, Silver Wyandottes and 

 Barred Plymouth Rocks. Our surroundings were very unfavorable, 

 but those hens gave us then a product of 184 eggs, 172 eggs and 160 

 eggs per hen, in the order named, and convinced us that the hen to lay 

 "two eggs every three days" was a coming reality. In 1890-91 we con- 

 ducted an experiment with several different breeds, and the variety that 

 stood second in our first test stood first this time, with 202 eggs to the 

 credit of each hen. 



