AMERICAN POULTRY CULTURE 



reason many who purchase fowls in the spring are 

 often sorely disappointed because a supply of eggs 

 is not readily forthcoming or the eggs do not hatch 

 well. 



Starting by Buying Eggs. For one who has not 

 made his start with a breeding pen by March, I 

 unhesitatingly recommend the egg plan as better. 

 The expense is less and one feels that he is starting 

 at the very foundation. He learns the business in 

 all its detail incubation, brooding, rearing, feed- 

 ing, housing and marketing; but this often is no 

 advantage, for the simple reason that failure is 

 liable to occur to the man who has had no expe- 

 rience, and then he has nothing else to fall back 

 upon, as would be the case if he had a good pen of 

 old birds. 



The man who would sell you a pen of fair breed- 

 ing birds for fifty dollars would probably supply 

 you with two hundred eggs for thirty dollars, and 

 these eggs would come from breeding pens worth 

 two or three times as much as those you would 

 have secured for fifty dollars. It would take your 

 eight or ten hens six weeks to produce the two hun- 

 dred eggs, perhaps longer. Buying your eggs all 

 at one time, you have twenty of your fifty dol- 

 lars remaining, with which to buy an incubator 

 or to buy broody hens to hatch the eggs. Also, 

 you have your chicks all of the same size and age, 

 which is a big advantage over having several dif- 



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