incubator. It was the talk of the country far and near. We filled 

 this incubator with eggs from those young brown Leghorn pullets. 

 What a tragical mistake this was! Any breeder could have told us 

 that this was folly. It seemed that fate should have us go through 

 this experience on purpose that the lesson could be well learned. 



On the day that we brought out the hatch people came from far 

 and near to see the mammoth incubator. We carried the chicks out 

 to the long brooder house by the hundred, bringing out about a 50 

 per cent hatch. This was a big drop from our first year's experience, 

 and we were again puzzled. 



It was a pretty sight to look down the long rows of pens in the 

 brooder house and see the little brown chicks scratching for their feed. 

 But how our hopes went down when they began to die one by one. 

 They were puny and weak and no power on earth could have raised 

 them. The parent stock was immature and not correctly mated. We 

 made a fizzle and hardly a respectable fizzle trying to raise chicks this 

 year. It was enough to discourage the bravest. The puny lot of stock 

 we raised that Spring was disgusting. Thin-breasted, thin-beaked, 

 with hardly enough vitality to hobble about. If we had only known 

 why we failed it would have made us feel better. We blamed the 

 incubator and the brooder system. Thousands have done the same 

 thing, and it has caused more kinds of brooder systems to be put on 

 the market than any other thing. The incubators and brooder were 

 all right, but the parent stock could not have been more carelessly 

 mated. It was only my bulldog tenacity that made me hold on. 

 Father was ready to quit. I was sure that there was a way to do it, 

 and began to take more heed to what I read and also to visit other 

 poultrymen to see what had already been done thus far in the history 

 of the poultry business. 



You know it takes some experience before you can look intelligently 

 into the experience of others. It is hard to take the other's word for 

 it; we like to try it ourselves. But a little actual experience makes you 

 read between the lines. I had just arrived at the place where I could 

 be told just a little bit. This receptive attitude saves an awful waste 

 of energy, but we have to have a taste of the real thing to appreciate 

 just what the other fellow has done along the line. 



I began to get a clearer perspective of what the poultry business 

 really meant. I wanted to make poultry my life work. I wanted to 

 locate in the most favorable place possible to start with. The long, 

 cold Winters in Indiana were forever a handicap. I had heard of the 

 glorious climate of California. To make a long story short, father and 

 I sold out the poultry business at the old home place at a loss to both. 

 I would hunt a new location and begin all over again. Father advised 

 me to raise hogs or go into cows. But I had started out to make a 

 poultryman and I could not bear to have my dreams changed. I saw 

 a bigger and more wonderful field in poultry than ever before. These 

 two years' experience would be worth dollars if I could only profit 

 by them. 



So I began the search for a good location, for I wanted the environ- 

 ment to be as good as Uncle Sam had on his broad domain for this 

 life work. I traveled through the Eastern States, visiting poultry 

 farms and gathering what experience I could. I saw many plants that 



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