Personal Experiences 45 



feet in size. I could not get them all in the brooder, and 

 when I think of this I wonder how many million of chicks 

 die through similar carelessness. 



When it rained the brooder house leaked, and there were 

 three inches of water inside of it. I saved the chicks from 

 drowning by filling in straw, but it was a terrible mess. We 

 were building the other house, and I was arrested for putting 

 up a building without a license. After the building was half 

 finished, the man I was working for was told that there was 

 no money in chickens; someone told him of some people who 

 had failed at it, and he wrote to stop all work on the building. 

 The building had half a roof on and no front, and I had to 

 put 600 little chicks three weeks old out in this shed without 

 any warm brooders. It was very cold and the rain was so 

 heavy that everything was floating in water. 



I kept up my experiments, and it was here that I first 

 noticed what a difference there was in the droppings of my 

 poultry between one week and another. I noticed that 

 although I would feed these hens dry bran the droppings 

 would be large and white, where the others were yellow and 

 foamy. I did quite a lot of experimenting then, though 

 nothing in particular came of it at the time. It left its impres- 

 sion on my mind, however. 



I next received an offer to go to Santa Cruz and put up a 

 poultry plant for a man who had just bought a place there. 

 When I arrived I was put out to sleep in a shed from which 

 they had taken out several dogs. The place was frightful. After 

 being there one week, I was ordered out of this place by the for- 

 mer owner, as the new owner had no right to the place for* 

 several months to come, having allowed the former owner 

 several months in which to harvest his crops. I went and slept 

 out on the banks of the creek in a place they called Happy 

 Valley. 



