POULTRY: A SUCCESS STORY 99 



light the brooder batteries; and there are three 

 heating units in the incubator and baby brooders. 

 After prayerful consideration I adopted an arbi- 

 trary way of reckoning the poultry's cost in elec- 

 tricity: taking 1932 when no juice was burned 

 for birds as a base, I charge all increases in the 

 electricity bills against poultry. During 1935 and 

 1936, with five hatches a year, the total increase 

 over this basic bill was $23.651688 than a dollar a 

 month. True, between 1932 and 1937 we had two 

 rate reductions. On the other hand, with a third 

 reduction our rate now drops to two cents on the 

 loist kilowatt hour and a restricted hatching pro- 

 gram, in 1937 the electric bill actually landed in 

 the credit side of the poultry ledger. According to 

 the representations of the mail-order catalog, I 

 reckon it costs me about as much to operate an 

 eighty-egg incubator by electricity as it did to run 

 a fifty-egg machine by oil, with none of the bother, 

 far less fire risk, and much greater accuracy. 



My father's unfulfilled ambition was to breed 

 a hen that would lay two hundred eggs per year. 

 Now, after thirty-five years' improvement by breed- 

 ing and culling, such records are the rule rather 

 than the exception. In her native state, one step 

 or so removed from her ancestral pheasant stock, 

 the hen laid a dozen or so eggs every spring and 

 called it a job. She has just so many eggs to lay and 

 seldom lays them all, even though she lives eight 



