SUCCESS IN POULTRY CULTURE 
And to dispose of the weaklings at 
once when they are first hatched is not 
discouraging like it is to see them dying, 
day by day, after a great deal of care, 
feed and labor has been spent on them. 
Many breeders make a practice of 
stopping the incubation when half of the 
-eggs are hatched, claiming that the first 
half of the chickens hatched contain ninety 
per cent. of the profit-makers in the hatch, 
and that ninety per cent. of the last half 
of the hatch will lose you money if kept 
to maturity. While I have not yet tested 
out this theory, it looks good to me, and 
I shall give it a thorough test; and I 
would advise every breeder to do so, for 
if the profit-losers can be eliminated at 
so early a period of their existence, it 
will surely add greatly to the profits of 
the poultry business, and the annoyance 
and discouragement of having a large per 
cent. of weakly chickens in your flock will 
be done away with. 
The very fact that some chickens hatch 
out in a shorter time than others, of 
the same sitting, is very good proof that 
they possess some advantage over those 
that hatch out later, and I have noticed 
40 
