10 THE BEGINNER IN POULTRY 



is even a school a private concern where all these 

 points are taught. 



If you are not willing to take on so imperative a serv- 

 ice, you will provide a good, green range for the birds, 

 let them wait on themselves just as much as may be 

 during all open weather, feed them each a handful of 

 grain once a day, with a few meat scraps from the 

 table or a little milk instead of the scraps, if this is 

 handier. They will begin to lay for you in April if 

 you have procured them in March (and this is about as 

 early as you can well begin, on this plan) at the north. 

 But, it will be several weeks before you will have any 

 hens ready to hatch for you, so that you can do no early 

 hatching unless you can buy some sitters. This sounds 

 feasible ; but there will be the difficulty of moving them 

 to their new quarters, and the possibly greater difficulty 

 of finding any for sale at all. For, at this special sea- 

 son, all who make any specialty of poultry are quite 

 likely to need all the broody hens for their own work ; 

 and this, even though they, use several hatching ma- 

 chines. You will hardly find it good business to buy 

 incubators while you have few layers and little experi- 

 ence, especially as you might not be able to procure 

 eggs in sufficiently large numbers. Besides, when eggs 

 are not plentiful, they are likely to be held too long for 

 best hatching. The Beginner, of all workers with 

 poultry, needs good tools and good eggs ; else, he can- 

 not tell whether any trouble which arises is due to his 

 own errors, or to the eggs, or to a poor machine. 



I wonder whether you would not rather buy some 

 new hatched chicks outright, from some one who is 

 known to have good ones, and begin with them ? You 



