THE LEGHORNS 



ditions. At the start we purchased thoroughbred Leg- 

 horns of proven laying qualities. It is important to get 

 thoroughbreds, as in no other way can you secure birds 

 uniformly alike, and hence susceptible of uniform treat- 

 ment. The trouble with the mongrel flock is that what 

 suits one type of bird does not quite suit another. 



How We Began 



There are three ways of starting your flock. The 

 first is to buy matured stock, and hatch the eggs they 

 lay; the second is to buy the eggs they lay, and the third 

 is to buy the chicks newly hatched — the so-called "day- 



Fig. 1. — Aurora Leghorn 

 Farm's portable modified, 

 Tolman Fresh Air House. 

 "Style A," size 14x14. Note 

 muslin screens. The house 

 is raised off the ground, 

 allowing free circulation 

 of air, thus preventing 

 dampness. 



old chicks." Despite all 

 that can be said in favor 

 of either of the first two 

 methods, the fact remains 

 that you are buying possi- 

 bilities. But when you 

 buy a chick, you have 

 something to start with. 

 So we bought thorough- 

 bred White Leghorn 

 chicks at approximately 

 twelve x:ents each — buying 

 during three months 



some two hundred fifteen in all, and we purchased two 

 standard brooders. Our initial outlay did not exceed sixty 

 dollars and we soon had the beginnings of a future "plant" 

 on the fifty by sixty plot in the rear of our Brooklyn 

 house. 



It is a fatal error to start on too large a scale. It is 

 also a fatal error to start with so few chickens that they 

 are not a serious proposition worthy of your care and 

 consideration. We aimed to have between sixty and 

 eighty pullets the first winter. We raised seventy-two 

 pullets out of the two hundred fifteen chicks purchased, 

 and eighty-two cockerels — one hundred fifty-four in all, 

 which is about seventy-two per cent of the entire num- 

 ber. A good many people do better than that; but we 



are glad if we can, on a larger scale, get one good pullet 

 for each three chicks hatclied. Many plants figure one 

 out of four. 



Chicks Artificially Hatched and Brooded 

 We did not do any incubating until the second sea- 

 son. We then ran off three hatches from a two hundred 

 twenty-egg machine, getting 187, 176 and 155 chicks re- 

 spectively. We have never set a hen, and never expect to. 

 It is too small potatoes to bother with — commercially. 

 When you can get a three hundred ninety egg machine, 

 with twenty minutes care a day, to give you as high as 

 three hundred sixteen fine healthy chicks, you do not 

 care to bother with hens. Our incubator capacity for the 

 coming season will be approximately five thousand eggs 

 and we shall hatch all our Leghorns in April. This will 

 insure their reaching maturity well before November. 



On our plant we make it a point of having our chicks 

 as nearly the same as possible. We have found that 

 shifting chicks from brooder to colony houses entails loss 

 and great trouble, so we have come to adopt the so-called 

 colony brooder, in which the chicks can be raised to ma- 

 turity. We place sixty chicks in a three feet by six, two- 

 compartment colony brooder and cull out the cockerels 

 as soon as we can distinguish them. These are fattened 

 for broilers and disposed of as rapidly as possible. We 

 find it does not pay to mature a Leghorn cockerel unless 

 you wish to keep him as a breeder. When losses are 

 taken into consideration, this will leave approximately 

 twenty-five pullets in each 

 colony brooder, which is an 

 ideal number. They will 

 thrive. Overcrowding is 

 fatal to success. Only vig- 

 orous birds will prove to be 

 winter layers. 



Food for the Chicks— White 

 Diarrhoea 



We have not found that 

 we can improve on the dry 

 grain method of feeding 

 brooder chicks. For the first 

 three days we feed bread 

 crumbs and hard boiled eggs, 

 chopped fine. Thereafter, we 

 use a good prepared chick 

 food until the chicks are ten 

 to twelve weeks old, when 

 they are gradually weaned, 

 and cracked corn and whole 

 wheat in equal parts are sub- 

 stituted. Beef scrap is fed 

 from the tenth day on. Char- 

 coal and grit are kept constantly before them, and their - 

 water is supplied in sanitary fountains and renewed three 

 times daily. 



Much loss is sustained through the ravages of white 

 diarrhoea. An effective preventive is to put a teaspoon- 

 ful of five per cent carbolic acid (commercial solution) in 

 ten quarts of water. Use this as drinking water from the 

 start until chicks are ten to twelve weeks old, and you 

 will have little trouble with diarrhoea. 

 Housing the Birds 

 When the chicks reach the age of three months, the 

 brooder is converted into a colony house and they are 

 given the freedom of the enclosure. All those that appear 

 backward are disposed of as broilers, and only the vig- 



