82 The Business Hen. 



"They lay well. They do not eat as much as the others. They are 

 tame and not so "scarey" as the Whites. They do not try so hard to get 

 out of the yard, and they are pretty!" 



As he grows older he will see a few more virtues and many more defects 

 than he now sees in the Browns. For instance, the very fact that these 

 little Brownies are so pretty with their varied plumage makes it all the 

 more difficult to breed them true. This was his first idea of a "type" of 

 hen that suited him, and I encouraged him in it, because it is the founda- 

 tion of success to try to develop and maintain the things that we love and 

 admire. 



As the boy studied his hens he found that two of the Brown Leghorns 

 laid well, while the other was something of a shirk. One of the hens 

 laid a much larger egg than the other, and as the small size of the egg 

 is one of the weaknesses of the Browns the boy decided to keep all of the 

 large eggs he could for hatching, keeping close to the principle that he 

 wants his coming pullets to "act like mother." He wants to save his 

 money and buy a good Leghorn rooster. 



Thus the boy begins to pick up the first principles of successful poultry 

 keeping. He is working out on a small scale some of the problems of 

 selection and feeding, the mastery of which have given men fame and 

 fortune. These successful men grew into their success just as the boy 

 is growing. At one time they knew less than he does. The reason they 

 succeeded is that they kept on growing and learned to reason things out 

 for themselves. One man may start with an old shed and a flock of 

 mongrels; form his idea of type and select for it; study the wants of a 

 hen and her comfort and grow into a comfortable business. People will 

 pay for his care and thought when wrapped in feathers just as they pay 

 for an author's thoughts when printed and bound into a book. Another 

 man may start with the finest fiock of purebred hens, go by printed rules 

 alone, make no personal study of the hen, and fail. One man has hen in 

 the heart — the other hen in the first layer of the head. 



