IN THE POULTRY YARD. 53 
. 
Working Ont a Spstem. 
AVING decided to make the attempt to add to my in- 
come by the keeping of poultry, I ‘set resolutely at 
work to arrange my plans, and work out a thorough 
system, so that success might be assured with at least a reasonalle 
degree of certainty. 
It was my purpose to have ultimately in my yards 1,000 laying 
hens. I concluded to dispense with cocks, as an expensive and 
useless addition, so far as these hens were concerned. Of these 
1,000 hens, I intended to have, on the first of January every year, 
500 birds of about nine months old, and 500 that were a year 
older, the intention being to get rid of the latter during the follow- 
ing season, as soon as they ceased to lay. This involved the 
necessity of raising 500 choice young pullets every.year, and as, 
more than half the chickens raised would be cockerels, and one- 
third of the remainder might prove culls, it was necessary that I 
should raise every year from 1,500 to 2,000 chickens. Allowing 
that each breeding hen, during the season in which I wanted to 
hatch my chickens, would lay 40 eggs, it would be necessary for 
me to have 50 breeding hens. These would have to be kept in 
small pens, of say 6 or 7 each, with a carefully selected: cock—re- 
quiring about eight breeding pens. Allowing an average of nine 
to a brood I found that I should need about 250 sitting hens with 
accommodation for them. 
As it was now nearly tlie first of July, it was too late to do 
much this season, but after mature deliberation I decided to pro- 
cure during the next three or four months, about 500 young hens and 
thus make a fair beginning for the coming year. Next season I 
intended to raise my full complement of 500 pullets, so that at 
the end of a year and a half from this time my system would ue In 
full operation. 
