the hen method and in incubators ; brooded them in fire- 

 less hovers in lots of 50 and by the stove method with 

 more than two thousand in one lot and house. He has 

 fought mites, lice and ticks; he has been through sieges 

 of colds, swell-head, chicken-pox and canker — not with 

 a mere handful of birds but with thousands of them, and 

 there is a vast diiiference in the operation. 



The advice and recommendations he makes herein are 

 based on that experience, and the methods herein out- 

 lined are the methods he follows. Let it be understood 

 that these plans and methods are by no means given out 

 as the ONLY way to success. They are given simply 

 as the plan and method by which he netted $10,000 in 

 1918 from an average of 4200 hens, and by which he has 

 persistently, year after year for more than six years, 

 made a very handsome profit from the keeping of hens 

 for commercial egg production. With other methods and 

 systems he is not herein concerned and he. who seeks 

 argument on comparison of plans and methods must look 

 elsewhere. 



To the writer it seems that the great error in most 

 books on poultry work lies in their failure to point out 

 some definite, concrete plan on which to proceed. To a 

 man totally ignorant of the practical side of the thing it 

 is simply confusing to outline many plans of procedure, of 

 which he may take his choice. It seems more reasonable 

 to outline the definite plan and method by which a suc- 

 cess has been achieved and let him follow that if he will, 

 until, from his own experience, he is qualified to make the 

 deviations and improvements which will lend themselves 

 more readily to his particular case. 



For the benefit of those who are fearful of their lack 



