710 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 
heads swelled and a lot more sneezing. You have a few cases of roup 
and you will not get any profit from them. 
The old saying "that an ounce of preventive is worth a pound of 
cure" is as true in the poultry business as in any other place. 
Now you have the house already for your hens, what kind are you go- 
ing to get. Well you can get any kind that suits you. I am not going to 
tell you that common hens are no good, and that in order to make any 
money from poultry you must have the pure-bred to start with for I know 
better, but I do believe in pure-bred poultry and in improved poultry and 
improved stock of all kinds and I would advise all who keep common 
fowls to breed them up to a higher grade. For myself I would start 
with pure-bred stock. All you need for a beginning would be a half- 
dozen hens and with good care you could raise enough to have a good 
sized flock the second year. I think your profit would be greater for the 
reason that there is always a demand for good pure-bred breeding stock 
at considerable above market price and the cost of keeping them is no 
more than that of common fowls. Then again, they look so much nicer 
that you take pride in showing them and caring for them. 
Now you have a good house and a nice fiock of hens in it, and every- 
thing to make them comfortable in way of shelter and right here is where 
nine out of ten make the great mistake and so great is it that it leaves 
the profits so small that it hardly pays to figure them up. A hen can 
take care of herself pretty well as long as nature provides her with plenty 
of green grass and lots of bugs and warm weather, providing you have 
"get up and get" enough to you to keep the lice and mites from eating 
them alive. But they cannot take care of themselves in the winter when 
it is cold and snowy. Then is the time that if you want eggs you must 
look after your hens, do not think it too much trouble to give them warm 
water to drink and a variety of grains to eat and don't wait until noon 
before you look after them; they should be fed as soon as it light and 
by sunup you can go out and bring in fresh eggs for breakfast. 
If you have everything else that is necessary and leave out the care 
your profits will be nothing, but give them the care they should have and 
you will always have plenty of eggs and be happy. 
Another great stumbling block to your success in the poultry business 
is in not culling out your flock every year systematically. Do not catch 
the first hen you come to and chuck her in the coop for it might be one 
of your early pullets and they are what will give you your winter eggs. 
As a rule it does not pay to keep a hen for laying more than two winters, 
but I will venture to say that in the majority of farm flocks you will 
find them all the way from one to six years of age, but if you wanted to 
sell everything but your one and two year olds, could you do it and be 
sure of leaving nothing older than two years old. The only sure and 
correct way is by foot marking when little and record it so you can 
refer to it and you can tell just what year they were hatched. The profit 
will more than pay for the trouble in marking. Try it. Your best winter 
layers will be from your March or April hatched pullets. 
The future looks promising to the man or woman with the hen. The 
high prices of beef, pork and mutton has caused an increased consump- 
tion of poultry and eggs. It has been fully demonstrated that a dozen 
