CHAPTER XIX. 

 Who Should Keep Hens ? 



We have seen how the egg is formed, how it is hatched, how the little 

 chick is cared for and how the hen is handled so as to make her a busi- 

 ness proposition in feathers. Now, who should keep the Business Hen? 

 Evidently a man should have "hen in the heart" if he expects Biddy to 

 fill his pocket. From what we have studied we can readily see how much 

 of the business side of the hen's work depends upon her partner man. 

 Take a horse that will trot a mile in 2:10. Probably 30 seconds of that 

 record is due to the man who trained and cared for the horse. Left to 

 himself, with his natural gait, the horse could not trot under 2 :40. The 

 cow that produces an enormous weight of milk or butter is developed 

 far beyond her natural flow by man's skill in handling and feeding. Just 

 the same with the hen. There are records of flocks that average 160 

 eggs per year. Handled without skill or comfort such flocks would not 

 average 60 eggs. That is why we said at the beginning that a man to suc- 

 ceed with the Business Hen must be "half hen' himself. While some will 

 succeed better than others no one should think of investing money in the 

 poultry business unless he is willing to put his heart into it and study the 

 habits of the hens. There is money in the poultry business for those who 

 do this. 



HENS VS. COWS. — To show how the hen ranks as a financier, Geo. 

 A. Cosgrove makes the following estimate. We do not disparage the 

 value of good cows, but we cannot all be dairymen, and there is a larger 

 surplus of milk than of fresh eggs : 



"A neighbor (as we call them in the country, though he lives four 

 miles away) keeps cows, I do not know how many, but he told me boast- 

 ingly that his creamery check last month was $86 and his bill for grain $60. 

 That leaves $26 — a dollar a day — for profit, if he didn't have to feed any 

 hay. Taking out the cost of hay for his 12 or 15 cows it would not leave 

 a great deal for his month's work. Another farmer who keeps 30 cow?, 

 has a splendid farm, is a powerful man in the prime of life, and a worker, 

 says that with the grain bill and hired help there is not a dollar in the 

 cow business. He makes his own butter and sells it to private customers in 

 a village six miles away. Hoard's Dairyman tells of two men who took 

 a 'cow census.' In Pennsylvania 25 farmers who were patrons of a cream- 

 ery averaged a net profit of $15.06 per year for each cow, while 25 more 

 made a profit of 66 cents per cow. In Indiana the best six out of fifty 

 averaged $21 per cow per year. It is fair to assume that these best cows 



