Part II.] FOWLS FOR EGG PRODUCTION. 9 



drains on his farm, and who grows many acres of many crops, 

 and who keeps careful accounts, and I asked him the question, 

 "Which branch of your farming do you look upon now as being 

 your most profitable, permanent, reliable, staple standby?" 

 He answered, as quickly as he could get the words out of his 

 mouth, "Poultry and asparagus." Now we cannot get behind 

 those facts; we cannot, in any way, question those statements 

 when men of substantial means and intelligence, men who are 

 capable of handling any branch of agriculture that their fancy 

 happens to take or that the market conditions would warrant, 

 take a position of that sort. A man walked into my office a 

 few days ago, as he has done now for five years in succession, 

 either at Thanksgiving or Christmas time, and laid down on my 

 desk an outline, a financial statement of his poultry enterprise, 

 — a city man with a city wife, who had wanted to get away 

 from the worries of city life, and, having enough means, bought 

 a farm and went into the keeping of poultry. When I saw 

 them branch out into the poultry business I had some misgiv- 

 ings because so many persons have gone into the breeding of 

 poultry who have spent money unwisely and have made failures 

 which have reflected upon the business generally. But at the 

 end of the year, when they came to the college again and 

 showed me the number of eggs they bought, the number of 

 chickens they hatched, the number of eggs they had received in 

 a year and other items of expense, all accounted for, I found 

 they had made the best record of anybody who had ever laid 

 down their accounts before us, and they continued to do it 

 every year right straight along; they have not met their failure 

 yet. This year they reared 94 per cent, of all the chickens 

 hatched, and they have not reared less than 92^ per cent, in 

 the years they have been in the business. They had an average 

 egg production of 133 eggs per hen and 165 eggs per pullet, 

 this past year, for their entire thousand birds. 



This man showed me where he had made $2.81 net profit for 

 every one of those hens as his labor income, after paying the 

 interest on the investment and every cost, including labor that 

 they hired, and had made a profit this year of $2,700 and some 

 odd cents from his chickens. 



Is he going to keep 2,000 and make twice as much? No. 



