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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