HOW TO MAKE A BEGINNING 5 
sible to get eggs from a farmer who has good util- 
ity stock for seventy-five cents for a setting of 
thirteen eggs. A motherly old hen to sit on the 
eggs can be bought anywhere in the country for a 
dollar. It is wise, though, to make sure of the 
hen before ordering the eggs. Eggs may be sent 
by express many hundred miles and hatch well, 
although it is safer to buy them nearer home. 
One should plan on setting one hundred eggs if 
he wants a flock of twenty-five laying hens the 
following Winter. To hatch and raise fifty per cent. 
will be a satisfactory record, and half of the chick- 
ens raised may be expected to be cockerels. Of 
course the latter may be served on the table or sold, 
thus reducing the cost of rearing the little flock. 
The twenty-five pullets left will be about the right 
number for the average amateur and may be con- 
fined in a ten-by-twelve house. 
There is another way of beginning in the Spring 
and one which is growing in favor. Day-old chicks 
of most of the common breeds may now be pur- 
chased at from fifteen to twenty-five cents each, and 
may safely be shipped for long distances, as newly 
hatched chicks require no food for forty-eight hours, 
due to the fact that just before they break their 
