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HOW I WOULD START AN EGG FARM. 



(Elijah Steen, Charleston, West Va.) 



I will buy one two hundred and fifty egg incubator to make my 

 start. Next spring I will buy four more. I will try to get my first 

 hatch off about the middle of March. I will buy a good laying strain 

 of White Leghorn eggs. If I should hatch about two hundred chicks, 

 I would stop for this spring. They would be put into piano-box 

 brooders. The hovers could be moved to the brooder house when 

 completed. They should be kept here until large enough to move to 

 colony coops in the orchard. I expect to raise one hundred pullets 

 and they would be the start of my egg farm. From them I would 

 select my fifty breeders for the next season. I will buy four good 

 yearling cocks to mate with them. I will have four pens of twelve 

 hens each to produce the eggs for setting. Two of these pens are 

 confined in yards south of the feed house. The other two pens would 

 be confined in another yard and use a colony house. Later these two 

 pens of hens would be turned in with the layers. Every spring I ex- 

 pect to hatch from one thousand five hundred to one thousand six 

 hundred chicks. From these I would select my five hundred layers. 

 My cull pullets and cockerels, when sold, will pay for the raising of all 

 young stock. My pullets will commence laying about October 1st, and 

 then they would be moved to the laying house and fed to produce 

 eggs. They have litter to work in, water, grit, shell, bran, beef scrap, 

 etc., always before them. Every fall I will sell as many old hens as I 

 keep pullets, and in that way have nothing older than yearling hens. 

 For Leghorn hens you can hardly get more than fifty cents each in 

 market. After they have worked for me two seasons they are not 

 worth any more. 



MARKETING PRODUCTS. 



I don't sell to commission men if I can avoid it. I sell to hotels, 

 apartment houses, first-class restaurants and soda fountains, or to a 

 party who can sell direct to the consumer, thus saving all commis- 

 sions and adding possibly five or ten cents per dozen to my receipts. 

 Some of my best customers are physicians who in turn have brought 

 me many customers among their patients by advising them to buy 

 eggs from me. This class of trade pays me ten cents above market 

 price for my guaranteed product. 



I buy folding cardboard cases that are partitioned to hold one 

 dozen eggs each. These cases cost eighty cents per hundred, adding 

 but a trifle to the actual cost of a dozen eggs. 



I have a dating stamp, and after the eggs are brought to the 

 house I carefully assort them, dating each egg with indelible ink, 

 saving the small ones for home use and place the larger ones in my 

 cartons with date end up. The date will add at least fifty per cent 

 to the flavor of the egg when it is served boiled at the consumer's 

 breakfast table a morning or two later. I do not fail to impress upon 



