Personal Experiences 33 



over again. I learned then that I would have to depend on 

 myself, and I thought I knew something about the poultry 

 business that no one else knew. I was positive that corn 

 was not the proper food for laying hens, for just as soon 

 as I would begin to feed it, the hens would stop laying, and 

 just as soon as I would use the middlings they would begin 

 to lay and would not stop. Could anything be plainer? 



I wondered how the originator of the S Method had 



ever used so much corn meal in his ration; I wondered 

 if he were not just another fraud. I wondered if by any 

 chance I could be mistaken. I had read in the poultry papers 

 that corn was a fine poultry food and to feed plenty of it; 

 also that hens preferred it to wheat. I would try to feed 

 whole corn to the hens, but they refused to eat it every time, 

 and I thought the poultry papers were wrong. When I put 

 it in mash instead of middlings my hens got too fat and 

 stopped laying. 



I was very eager to succeed — to "make good" in the poul- 

 try business. I had dreams of having some day the greatest 

 poultry farm in the world. The poultry papers said that it 

 took hard work and lots of it to succeed in the poultry busi- 

 ness — in fact 365 days of hard work every year. Well, if 

 that would make a success I was going to succeed; I would 

 never for one second neglect my hens. I was very ambitious, 

 but I soon found out that hard work will not make a hen 

 lay an egg, whereas right feeding and proper housing will. 



I have never neglected my poultry for one minute since 

 I started in the poultry business. I have never fed them 

 food that I would not eat myself, except beef-scrap or granu- 

 lated milk, and of these I always got the best. I have at 

 times stinted myself in order that my hens might have the 

 best food to eat. I was eager to learn, to know exactly how 

 to make hens lay eggs, and I knew I would never learn unless 



