!6 THE BEGINNER IN POULTRY 



lucky) to $10. But, if you prefer to begin with fair, 

 pure-bred birds of the breed which you think you will 

 like best, you may get the six layers for $9, possibly, 

 and four common hens for sitters for $4 more. But 

 prices now tend to run higher than this for even 

 ordinary pure stock, especially in the spring, when most 

 of the surplus has been sold and the supply is likely to 

 be short of the call. 



The two lots of chicks which you considered buying 

 would have cost you anywhere from $7.50 up according 

 to quality and your location. In favorable places, pos- 

 sibly even a little less ; I see them advertised, at times, 

 at eight cents apiece, but this is rare. The specially 

 good point about starting with the hens is that with 

 six good ones you can count on about thirty-five eggs a 

 week for a short time, and with ten hens, if you de- 

 velop skill in feeding, you may get fifty or sixty eggs 

 a week for a short time in spring. Thirty-five eggs 

 a week would supply five sitters with work every eleven 

 days, if you wished to use them all that way. It is 

 not wise to save them up much longer than this. If 

 you can get the sitters for them, you will be lucky, 

 for this brings your lots of chicks only eleven days 

 apart in age. You can sell the hens for nearly what 

 they cost, when the chicks leave them, and your own 

 layers will be yielding eggs right along more or less 

 until the middle of September, perhaps, giving you 

 eggs to sell. You may get enough for the table till 

 well into October ; but November and possibly Decem- 

 ber will be months of all outgo and no income, unless 

 your pullets are early enough to begin with October. 

 A good pullet commonly takes six or seven months to 



