Provided you have a little capital to invest, 3 excellent plans for estab¬ 
lishing a back-yard poultry plant are available: 
FIRST, you can buy hatching eggs and hatch them in an incubator 
or under hens. 
SECOND, you can buy day-old chicks and raise them to maturity. 
THIRD, you can buy pullets just coming into the laying age and have 
eggs from the first day. 
With any of these plans the first expense will be for the poultry house 
and equipment. If built according to the plans and specifications herein 
given (see page 17), the house will cost $40. The equipment necessary 
with all 3 plans—drinking fountains, feed hoppers, a bucket, etc.—will 
cost $3, making a total minimum initial expense of $43. 
Partitioning off 4 feet for your brooding section (see “a” Fig. 2), 
securing an incubator or some broody hens and 100 hatching eggs, and 
putting in an International Sanitary Hover, you will be prepared to 
proceed according to the first plan. 
The Sanitary Hover will cost $8.50, and a 100-egg-capacity incubator 
about $15. To this will have to be added the $40 for your building and 
the $3 for drinking fountains, feed hoppers, etc. With this plan, there¬ 
fore, your expense for building and equipment will be $66.50, to which 
will have to be added $10 for 100 hatching eggs. (This $10 cannot be 
charged against your permanent equipment). 
Your hatching eggs should be bought and set in two lots of 50 each. 
The first hatch should begin about the middle of January, which will 
give you early February chicks. Pullets from this hatch will begin to lay 
in July and keep at it for 4 months. In November about 60 per cent, of 
them will go through a light molt. These will be laying again in January. 
Your second hatch should begin not earlier than April 1 and end not 
later than May 15. The pullets will begin to lay between the 5th and 
6th months (October or November) and continue without interruption 
until the following August. 
The merit of this plan is in the fact that it will give you laying pullets 
throughout the whole year. Were you to set all your eggs in January, a 
majority of your birds would be molting in November—the very season 
when the price of eggs is beginning to give pointers to flying machines. 
If all your birds were April or May hatched, you would get but few eggs 
from them till well into fall. 
The astonishing success of the Rancocas Farm is owing largely to the 
fact that the Rancocas hatching and feeding systems keep the hens work¬ 
ing overtime during the season when the other fellow’s hens are taking 
their annual holiday to molt. 
With ordinary care you should hatch 65 chicks from your 100 eggs. 
Of these 80 per cent., or 52 birds, should be alive and healthy when 6 months 
old. If your hatching eggs were Rancocas Strain stock, 60 per cent, of 
the birds should be pullets. This would give you for your first season 
31 pullets and 21 cockerels. 
The cost of grain food for 6 months will average 4 cents a month for 
each bird. The cost of feeding your flock up to the laying point will be, 
Plan 1— 
Starting With 
Hatching Eggs 
60 Per Cent. 
Pullets 
7 
