MAKING PLANS THAT WORK 71 



First, that this time last year the laying flock was 

 ninety per cent pullets, more than half of which 

 had not reached egg-laying maturity. Secondly, 

 that in the current fortnight the hens gave us five 

 times as many eggs this year as they did last. 

 Thirdly, that the basis of this gross error is mem- 

 ory's confusion of last fall's low production level 

 with the following spring's peak. 



I have checked milkers' estimates of the cows' 

 productivity and know they bear no relationship 

 whatsoever to the facts that can only be found 

 by weighing each cow's milking and marking it 

 down on the milk record right then and there in 

 the barn. Without records, the guess at the proper 

 time to do a certain job may vary a week to a 

 month, from one year to the next. Memory is 

 guesswork, and like all other kinds of guesswork 

 is always fallible. With a little practice an amateur 

 can learn to cut two, or three, or three and one- 

 half pounds of meat off a carcass, so close to the 

 desired weight as is no matter. But only yester- 

 day, when I was selling a pair of pigs on the hoof 

 there was a variant between the guesses at the live 

 weight made by two experts men who have han- 

 dled more pigs than I have ever seen of more 

 than fifteen per cent. No man living can guess the 

 weight of a critter on the hoof, or the number of 

 bushels in a heap of potatoes, or the number of 

 acres in a field of alfalfa invariably within ten per 



