8 THE CALL OP THE HEN. 



returns, and in the spring of 1906, I left Minnesota for Cali- 

 fornia, a physical and financial wreck. After having regained 

 my health, I began here at Petaluma to build up the same 

 kind of a flock of layers that I had done in previous years, 

 with the idea of publishing my entire work when I should 

 have bred up a strain of 200-egg hens and better. 



After I removed to California, Professor M. E. Jaffa, of 

 the University of California, became interested in the matter, 

 and at the request of the Petaluma Poultry Association, had 

 the discovery tested at the California Poultry Experimental 

 Station for two years, and continued for two years longer for 

 the purpose of determining the value of four-year-old hens 

 as layers, as it is outlined in this book in the chapter relating 

 to the selection of the best layers in a flock. 



It was also tested in New Zealand by D. D. Hyde, chief 

 poultry expert for the New Zealand government, and Prof. 

 Brown, of the New Zealand Poultry Experiment Station. I 

 have repeatedly been requested by 'my friends in different 

 parts of the world to publish the full matter in book form, 

 but poor health and lack of sufficient funds have prevented me 

 from doing so until now. As this work will be copyrighted, I 

 do not anticipate the literary pirates will raid it as they have 

 my former work. In justice to the poultry fraternity .1 

 want to say that while I have been, and am now, a member 

 of the American Poultry Association, and have raised poultry 

 fifty-six years, and now raise them by the thousand, I have 

 never in the past classed myself as a poultryman in the strict 

 sense of the word. Hundreds have known me as an inventor, 

 and woolen manufacturer, where one would know me as a 

 poultry crank and the only apology I have for offering 

 this book to the public in a field already crowded with poultry 

 literature, is the earnest solicitation of my friends. 



WALTER HOGAN, 

 Petaluma, California, July 7, 1912. 



