100 WE FARM FOR A HOBBY 



or nine years. The big pay-off in productivity is in 

 her first three years. Hence, and also because in 

 their first year pullets will start to lay at five or six 

 months regardless of the season, one keeps a steady 

 line of replacement pullets coming along, with 

 hatchings timed to bring them into production in 

 the fall and early winter peak-price seasons. 



In summer some hens go into a "vacation 

 molt," then molt again in the fall. Such birds 

 never pay their own freight, for only the excep- 

 tional hen will lay through a molt. The only rem- 

 edy is to band all the hens with numbered bands, 

 provide trap nests, keep records of individual per- 

 formance and cut the deadheads' tails off behind 

 their ears. From thirty to sixty per cent of every 

 flock will take this way to the everlasting bonfire. 

 But trap-nesting is a tedious, exacting chore: it 

 means visiting the laying house every hour or two, 

 every day, for months. I have done it. But I de- 

 cided two years ago to drop it, to postpone the 

 higher efficiency until I can install laying batteries. 

 These provide a private cage for every hen. Rec- 

 ord tags are hung on the cages, and the minute a 

 hen falls below an established minimum monthly 

 production off comes her head. Meantime, pursu- 

 ing a non-trapping policy I still find it possible to 

 make the farm flock pay out, and on relatively ex- 

 pensive mill feed. 



All the world is divided into two embattled 



