HAPPY HOLLOW FARM 273 



for every possible emergency, and then cutting 

 the resulting figures in two and dividing again 

 by half, we couldn't for the life of us find any 

 good reason why there shouldn't be good 

 money in commercial poultry farming. We 

 went at it in our second year. 



We didn't plunge. We didn't try to force 

 the pace at all at the beginning. The best of 

 our stock was used for the breeding pens, and 

 our eggs were strongly fertile. We had a 

 one hundred and forty-egg incubator, and this 

 was filled a second time so soon as the first 

 hatch was off. As our supply of good eggs 

 was larger than the incubator's capacity, we 

 supplemented its work by setting hens on good 

 clutches at the same time, so that the chicks 

 might be brooded and tended all together. 



Our hatches were excellent, and our losses 

 after hatching were very small. Of course the 

 year's work didn't show anything like a fifty- 

 fold increase in the number of hens used in 

 breeding, but the increase was very satisfac- 

 tory. After a rigid culling out, we went into 

 the next year with about two hundred hens fit 

 for use in the pens. We didn't use all of 

 them, but selected again, taking only the best ; 

 and again the hatches were fine. By mid- 



