228 



AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 



June, 1908 



General View of a Scientific Chicken Hatchery, Showing the Arrangement of the Houses, with Flocks Feeding 



expenses of operation as well as of taxes and other charges. 

 The hatcheries on this farm have produced as many as thir- 

 teen thousand three hundred eggs in one month, a thousand 

 pullets being reserved for laying. The annual output of 

 spring chickens averages about four thousand. Of the eggs 

 about sixty per cent, are sent to market, the balance being 

 placed in the incubators. Although the place is located upon 

 less than ten acres of land as many as six thousand fowls can 

 be counted in its inclosures at one time. 



One of the largest poultry farms in the country is located 

 at Aurora, New York, and is illustrated in the accompanying 

 photographs. This place occupies a site of two hundred and 

 sixty-nine acres, but only a portion of it is at present used for 

 poultry raising, thirty acres being covered with timber and 

 another section is devoted to growing grain partly for poul- 

 try feed. The buildings include ten laying houses, having a 

 capacity for no less than five thousand seven hundred hens. 

 The incubator cellar contains one hundred and forty-six in- 



cubators with a total capacity of about fifty-five thousand 

 eggs. The colony and brooder houses also provided are of 

 such capacity that the company can take care of one hundred 

 thousand young birds at one. time, while its annual output is 

 two hundred and fifty thousand chickens for broiling and 

 roasting and over one hundred thousand ducklings. Most of 

 this poultry is sold in the larger eastern cities, as well as the 

 eggs, which are hatched from fifty thousand hens kept spe- 

 cially for this purpose. 



The results attained at this establishment show that the 

 average hen will lay at least eleven dozen eggs a year at a 

 total cost of but one dollar and a half annually for food and 

 care. The price for the eggs is such that the average profit 

 per fowl is one dollar and a quarter. From the eggs alone 

 the company owning this plant secures a profit of sixty thou- 

 sand dollars a year, while the profit on the chickens raised for 

 broiling and roasting amounts to thirty thousand dollars 

 more. 



Inspecting the Stock in the Open Ground 



