and operation of an integrated poultry marketing system. Additional 

 studies will be made to determine feed milling and feed distribution 

 costs. All tbese results will provide a tborough analysis on a type of ver- 

 tically integrated organization which has developed in New England as 

 well as in other regions. 



Eleven hatcheries operating in New England and many manufac- 

 turers and suppliers of hatchery equipment and supplies were the 

 sources of data used in developing the hatchery and distribution models. 

 Data collected from hatcheries consisted of labor productivity relation- 

 ships, operational procedures, equipment and labor resource require- 

 ments, wage rates, and costs and inputs of supplies, electricity, and fuel. 

 Manufacturers and suppliers provided technical specifications and costs 

 on equipment and supplies. 



III. Economies of Scale in Hatching of Straight-rim 



Broiler Chicks 



Procedure 



The synthetic or budgetary approach is adopted for this study since 

 it provides a method of surmounting problems encountered with other 

 methods. For each of several defined capacities, a model plant is syn- 

 thetically constructed and operated. Each one is efficiently designed and 

 equipped to produce its intended capacity output. This approach pro- 

 vides the element of control needed in determining the physical input- 

 output relationships. With standardized cost assigning procedures, this 

 determines the short-run average costs and economies of scale. 



Hatchery Capacities and Operating Scliedules 



Eight model hatcheries ranging in egg capacity from 121,800 to 

 2,029,500 are developed.^ The outputs of these hatcheries coincide with 

 the needs of eight broiler producing operations for eight processing 

 plants developed in a previous study.- These processing plants range in 

 capacity from 600 to 10,000 broilers per hour and operate 40 hours a 

 week. 



Three assumptions are essential to determine the hatchery egg capa- 

 cities: 



1. The hatching process requires 21 days to hatch an egg into a 

 chick. The eggs are placed for 19 days in the incubating area and trans- 

 ferred to the hatching area for the two final days. A full output cycle is 

 completed once each 21 days or 17.3 times a year which maintains a 

 schedule that will permit the settings of eggs to fall on identical days 

 each week. 



1 Egg capacity is the total egg holding capacity of all incubating and hatching 

 equipment in a hatchery in terms of eggs weighing 26 ounces a dozen. 



- Rogers and Bardwell, op. cit., p. 16. 



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