44 MY POULTRY DAY BY DAY 
old bought during the same period will cost twice as much. You 
will probably get eggs earlier from the pullet, and if eggs are the 
only object and the original outlay immaterial, it is certainly better 
to buy six or eight month old pullets straight away. A well- 
developed pullet should be laying in October, and very few eighteen- 
month-old hens lay before December. Again, a pullet—at any 
rate a pure-bred one—will lay some forty more eggs than the 
hen will lay during the season. Hf, therefore, you get forty more 
eggs, worth, say, twopence each, you will get back all the in- 
creased cost (and more) as between a yearling hen and a laying 
pullet. A further advantage of the pullet is that after her first 
season’s laying is finished she is good for another year’s eggs, 
whereas if you buy birds eighteen months old they have practically 
come to the limit of their profit. It is rarely wise to keep a pure 
breed, excepting for breeding purposes, after the end of the second 
laying year. There are, however, some cross-breeds, and, I believe, 
one pure breed, that lay as well during their second season and 
almost as well during their third laying year. The pure breed is 
the Red Cap, a type of fowl now to be seen mostly in Derbyshire. 
Let us assume that the beginner has bought his dozen or half- 
dozen fowls. If they are Leghorn pullets he had better wait till 
the second year before he attempts to breed from them. One 
may get passably good birds from the produce of a Leghorn 
pullet, say in April or May, but there can be little doubt that for 
health, stamina and vitality in the offspring a two-year-old hen 
is much more reliable. If one intends to breed from a pullet it 
is better to mate it with a two-year-old male bird. By this means 
you will have maturity on one side at least. But if breeding 
from a two-year-old hen, a well-developed, early hatched, vigorous 
cockerel will serve the purpose better. I think it goes without 
saying that all the larger and more scientific breeders go for the 
latter plan—the older hen and the younger male bird. 
If Leghorns only are in your pen it will be necessary to get a 
heavy breed to hatch out your eggs, if you do not care to incubate. 
As a rule it<does not pay to buy an incubator unless you wish to 
breed on a large scale. One might easily breed up to a hundred 
