48 MY POULTRY DAY BY DAY 
Buy at Six WEEKs OLD 
Personally, I have never done better than when buying chickens 
from one to two months old. In many ways it is cheaper than 
rearing them on the premises ; nor is there the same anxiety about 
them in the early stages. The worries of the hatching season have 
turned many a golden ringlet to grey and many a grey to white. 
Some there are who have the knack of rearing chicks successfully, 
and these are the people who do not worry even if they do have 
an “accident”? now and again. Temperament enters into the 
chicken business even as it does into every other sphere of 
activity, and happy the man (or woman) who can charm the 
chickens into health and strength. 
One cannot, of course, get a large selection if one buys chickens, 
say, six weeks old, because very few people care to sell at this inter- 
esting stage. Yet if one diligently search the poultry papers there 
are always exceptions, and if one is lucky enough to make applica- 
tion first there are rewards in plenty. I have more than once 
bought chickens from a reliable man at five or six weeks old for a 
very little more than if I had bought them from the same firm at 
their birth. I have actually bought pure-bred chickens from a 
month to six weeks old at eleven and twelve shillings per dozen. 
One season I bought 50 day-olds from one firm and 50 five-week- 
olds from another, both at the same price. Now mark what 
happened. They all arrived alive, but the weather turned out 
to be severe, and within a month I had 82 of the day-olds 
left and 44 of the five-week-olds. In this proportion they were 
reared to maturity. I had a lot of trouble and spent much 
time with the baby birds that was unnecessary with the older 
chickens. I saved five weeks’ food and five weeks’ work, and a 
very great deal of anxiety. The older chickens gave me little or 
no trouble, the younger ones for six weeks needed endless attention. 
I reared to maturity a dozen more birds of the older lot. More 
than that, they began to lay nearly two months before the others. 
It is a curious fact that fowls of the same breed hatched in March 
and April, respectively, will not start to lay within a month of each 
