8 THE CALL OF THE HEN. 
to lay. I thought that if they did not know that much of the laying 
proposition, I would be safe in going ahead with publishing my secrets. 
The letters I received were left in Minnesota when I came to California 
shortly before the earthquake in 1906, so I cannot name the judges at 
present, but they will remember me as the proprietor of the Fergus 
Falls Woolen Mills; and I must say they replied in a very courteous 
manner, saying there was no way except the general appearance of the 
bird, as to its maturity of form, redness of comb and wattles, singing, 
looking for nest, etc. One only of the number charged me one dollar 
for this information. 
Failing health obliged me to dispose of my manufacturing business 
and retire to the farm, and it was in the spiing of 1905 before I published 
my ‘‘Walter Hogan System,’”’ when it appeared in a number of poultry 
papers. (See Reliable Poultry Journal, March, 1905.) I did not 
copyright the work at that time, although my experience in mechanical 
inventions had taught me that I should have done so, and the following 
August imitations began to appear until in 1912 a number of different 
parties in the United States and foreign countries were claiming author- 
ship and selling it under the same or different titles. 
My years of research and expense brought me no financial returns, 
and in the spring of 1906*I left Minnesota for California, 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 Uni- 
versity 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. J 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 pre- 
vented 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, I 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 ‘“‘poultry- 
man” in the strict sense of the word. Neither do I claim that I am the 
only one who has discovered the facts set forth in this book. I only 
know that I have never seen them in print before. I know what the 
results of following this method have been with me, and I feel safe in 
assuming that the things I have discovered have not been known. 
Hundreds have known me as an inventor and woolen manufacturer 
where one would know me as a “‘poultry crank;’’ and the 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 Hocan. 
Petaluma, Cal., July 7, 1912. 
