White Leghorns. A Petaluma Egg Farm 



State, it would all come to this that success results from building up the 

 conditions upon which success must rest. 



The Dollar Basis to Start With 



In this State poultry men are reported as saying that "if a man cannot make 

 more than a dollar a hen, he ought to quit." But that is debatable. Many a 

 family can make $1,000 a year by keeping 1,000 hens, and make it easier and more 

 surely than in almost any other way. They can do it with small capital and 

 on two or three acres. Perhaps not at once; it is wise to begin with a few fowls 

 and increase the flock as one increases in ability to manage. Conceit may go with 

 ignorance, but confidence based on knowledge is strength, and will win out. 



Here the rudiments of knowledge go with great natural advantages. Cali- 

 fornia offers the grower help at every point. Emphasize all we have said of it 

 elsewhere. Count especially on green feed in reducing the expenses of supple- 

 mental greens and meals of various kinds. Alfalfa alone is of such value to the 

 poultry man, and is so easily grown that it ought to insure the success of almost 

 any beginner who will provide decent shelter and keep houses and yards clean. 

 It contributes to the production of eggs and to the health of the flock, and one 

 might venture to begin with an alfalfa field, a hay cutter or food cutter, and a 

 group of cypress trees for roosting places, and so get well started. 



Make the most of the climatic conditions. The hen seems to live to eat, but 

 under right conditions she eats to lay, and vigorous, active, well-bred young hens 

 must lay if given in addition to grains and meat scraps plenty of tender alfalfa, 

 cured alfalfa cut into short lengths and added to the mash, or alfalfa meal. We 

 touch it again at this point to emphasize our sense of its importance. And we 

 add our conviction, the result of the observations of half a lifetime, that if poultry 

 keeping has failed to return a fair profit in this State, there has been neglect in 

 establishing, by study and attention, by intelligent feeding and by cleanliness, 

 the conditions of profit. 



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