64 MY POULTRY DAY BY DAY 
bird for the twelve months. When one considers that during ten 
weeks of the best part of the laying season as many as 28 of these 
160 hens were hatching eggs and rearing chickens, it will be seen 
that the record is quite satisfactory. Taking the Leghorns by 
themselves, I find they laid 142 eggs per bird, while the Buff 
Orpingtons, that did all the hatching, worked out at 124 eggs per 
bird for the year. 
It ought to be taken into consideration that my 160 fowls 
were kept in two flocks of 120 and 40. Large numbers together do 
not give quite the same generous results as when pens are divided 
up into groups of 10 to 20 each. Why this should be so is a 
problem that has never been satisfactorily solved, but possibly with 
smaller flocks the birds get more individual attention. 
It is acknowledged that any figure approaching 150 eggs per 
bird per annum in large flocks is not merely a paying proposition 
but a thumping good result. In laying competitions with selected 
birds, kept in pens of six, and each bird nursed by an expert, it is 
possible to get averages at or over 200 eggs per bird, and that 
ideal is what the commercial egg-farmer has to work for. In the 
meantime, flocks of hens that lay over twelve dozen each per year 
are already on a commercial basis. 
In the twelve months I sold approximately 21,700 eggs, for 
£183, 15s. 6d. 
T raised from eggs 241 chickens, of which only 109 were cockerels. 
Most of the cockerels I kept till they were six months old, when 
they averaged 4s. each—total £21, 16s. The remaining 132 
pullets I valued at the end of the year at 6s. each, and I could 
easily have sold them for more—total for pullets, £39, 12s. 
We can now state the Grand Totals :— 
Eggs. , j : F . £183 15 6 
Cockerels : : ; _ : 21 16 Oo 
Pullets . F ‘ “ ‘ ‘ 39 12 0 
£245 3 6 
Costoffood . ‘ 7 ‘ * 927 16 8 
Gross Profit : 3 : « {117 -6 To 
