STARTING AND CAPITAL 37 
bating your own chicks, as incubators in the 
hands of the novice sometimes do not turn 
out the results hoped for because of inex- 
perience, infertile eggs, accidents, etc 
Rather buy one incubator with which to ex- 
periment, but make your estimates and cal- 
culations entirely outside of the incubator, 
buying whatever day old chicks you can 
afford. Let these day old chicks be your 
foundation stock, good, hardy chicks of a 
fair strain of the one breed you want to de- 
velop. Don’t buy several breeds; make your 
choice and stick to the one kind. 
It takes the average beginner with the 
average flock of pullets, six to seven months 
to get the majority laying. There is more 
money in having them all matured and of 
laying age by December 1 than to have part 
of them stringing along to February; so it 
would be advisable to buy all stock in March 
and April. This would assure you of the 
early matured pullets. If you count on incu- 
bating your chicks yourself you will find that 
the first year you can not be sure of the early 
hatches without a large incubator capacity. 
It is very much more desirable to have the 
chicks as nearly of one age as possible, as it 
will save untold worry and annoyance. If 
