1914. 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
25 
A CHICKEN MAN’S ARITHEMTIC. 
“And why White Leghorns?” 
That was the question I put to the 
chicken man, after looking over his plant, 
and as we were leaning against the side 
of the largest and latest of his half dozen 
henhouses, the one which was evolved out 
of his 10 or 12 years’ experience in the 
chicken business, one which embodied the 
idea of a 000-hen unit, and was self- 
contained—that is, it had water in the 
house, a feed room, and arranged so that 
the brooding for the house was provided 
for, and that when the hens were to be 
replaced by pullets the change was easy 
and simple. 
We old farmers tried to keep to general 
farming, though the country was ill- 
adapted to field crops; a light, sandy soil 
made fruit, early vegetables and poultry 
much better suited to the region, besides 
a good market easy to reach. 
The chicken man was not a farmer- 
born, but was city bred, and until he was 
20 years of age had never been outside of 
the city, except to meet a baseball or 
football team in some country town. 
About 10 years ago he came to the neigh¬ 
borhood and proceeded to develop a poul¬ 
try farm out of a hundred acres of stump 
and second-growth timber land. lie had 
never*shirked work, took advice when it 
seemed reasonable, was perfectly square 
and honest, and had developed a good 
business by work and attention to details 
with very little money, so that now his 
net income was one of the largest, if not 
the largest, in the whole neighborhood. 
As to the Leghorns, he answered : “Be¬ 
cause, as eggs are the chief source of 
profit in the poultry business in this re¬ 
gion, I keep the hen that will give me the 
largest return on the investment.” 
This was an answer, but hardly a sat¬ 
isfactory explanation, so I said : 
“Do White Leghorn hens lay more eggs 
than those of any other breed? Say, as 
do my wife’s Plymouth Rocks? It seems 
I have seen it stated in all the poultry 
papers that there is practically no differ¬ 
ence in the number of eggs laid by the dif¬ 
ferent breeds in a year; that all the col¬ 
lege contests show about the same number 
of eggs, from the Plymouth Rock, or the 
Wyandotte, or the Rhode Island Red, or 
the Orpington hen, and so on?” 
He smiled and said : “Let me illustrate 
by an analogy and by a comparison: As 
a dairyman, when you make up your ra¬ 
tion for your cows, there are at least two 
factors you consider—the weight of the 
cow, and how much milk she is giving. 
The weight is a fixed factor; for example, 
if you had five cows that weighed 0,000 
pounds you would feed them about the 
same as if you had 10 cows that weighed 
(5,000 pounds, and your milk would likely 
be about the same. The feed and the 
receipts would both depend on the weight 
of cows you kept, not on the number; 
and to raise 6,000 pounds of mature cows 
would also depend on the weight and not 
on the number. Applying this analogy to 
chickens, while we make a comparison, 
to raise 6,000 pounds of chickens of the 
White Leghorn breed, at four pounds to 
the hen. there would be 1,500 hens. The 
Plymouth Rocks. Rhode Island Red, or 
Orpingtons would weigh, say TVe pounds, 
and we would have S00 laying hens. The 
by-product in both cases would be al¬ 
most the same. 
“In White Leghorns this would be: 
1,500 broilers, 1% pounds each, 2,250 
pounds; 1,500 two-year-old hens, four 
pounds each, 6,000 pounds. In the Ply¬ 
mouth Rocks, Rhode Island Reds, Orping¬ 
tons, etc., that would be: SO0 broilers, at 
2*4 pounds each, 2,000 pounds; 800 two- 
year-old hens, 7% pounds each, (5,000 
pounds. If there was any difference it 
would be slightly in favor of the White 
Leghorns, as on the open market the price 
is the same per pound. 
“In egg production, however, the show¬ 
ing would be overwhelmingly in favor of 
the White Leghorn. Say for the year the 
hens would average 12 dozen eggs each, 
a rather high average, I admit, though 
very conservative when you read the “200- 
egg hen” literature, that you would have 
1,500 White Leghorns, at 12 dozen each, 
500 cases; 800 heavy breeds, at 12 dozen 
each, 270 cases; in favor of 6,000 pounds 
White Leghorns, 230 cases. That is the 
reason why I confine myself entirely to 
White Leghorns. If my specialty were 
broilers or soft roasters, or capons, the 
argument might take on quite a different 
phase. As to the fancier, he is an artist 
in a class by himself; and it is well that 
he chooses the breed that appeals to him 
for other than commercial reasons, and 
most of the reasons given for the different 
breeds are not commercial reasons. 
“Don’t understand me that you can 
produce 500 cases of eggs with White 
Leghorn hens for the same food that you 
can produce 270 cases with the heavy 
breeds, but the machine that gives you 
500 cases will take only a little more 
than the one that gives you 270 cases a 
year. Some years ago, in a little experi¬ 
ment one Spring, I found that the food 
consumed by 100 White Wyandotte hens 
would well feed 160 White Leghorns, and 
this experiment was made during the egg 
season. The percentage of eggs was about 
the same in both flocks, so I found that 
the food went to egg production in a 
much larger proportion in the one case 
than in the other. The White Leghorn 
broiler is a great favorite among my cus¬ 
tomers ; so is the small compact two- 
year-old hen ; so the by-product is very 
easy to dispose of. I might add housing, 
foraging and freedom from broodiness, 
but the reasons are obvious to one who is 
in the egg business.” D. H. c. 
Michigan. 
Mating Breeding Pens. 
My problem is how to mate up breed¬ 
ing pens of 50 hens and four cockerels. 
I know that many of your readers run 
several cockerels together successfully but 
so far I have not been able to prevent 
their fighting even when brought up to¬ 
gether. I would like to hear how they 
manage it. B. P. 
Maine. 
Two vigorous cockerels are sufficient 
in a pen of 50 hens, and they may be 
either alternated or allowed to run to¬ 
gether and fight it out. Usually one will 
cow the other and there will be little 
fighting after the question of supremacy 
is settled. If they are so equally mated 
as to cause constant fighting the only 
remedy is to remove one of them, allow¬ 
ing but one in the pen at a time, though 
in doing this, you lose the advantage of 
having the hens mate with the most vig¬ 
orous cockerel. My own practice is to 
place enough males in the flock to insure 
fertility, or perhaps more than enough, 
and allow them to mate indiscriminately, 
feeling assured that the law of the sur¬ 
vival of the fittest will aid me in getting 
the hens mated with the most vigorous 
males, whose services I would choose if 
I could pick them. When running alone, 
however, it is sometimes difficult to tell 
which of the two cocks has the most vim. 
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A little competition soon settles it. 
M. B. D. 
Hens With Intestinal Disease. 
Can you help me with my Plymouth 
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pings. They do not appear sick. They 
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Their morning meal consists of a com¬ 
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they are home-grown. In a couple 
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An occasional discharge of bloody mu¬ 
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much more severe inflammation resulting 
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