PROFITABLE EGG FARMING. 
for the premium-paying trade; the smaller eggs 
and those not quite up to “No. 1 ” in quality are 
graded as “seconds” and are sold in market for 
what they will fetch. 
Mr. Terry, in the Practical Farmer, said the 
3,000 hens were last winter turning in an in¬ 
come of $98.70 per day for eggs alone, and that 
stock for breeding carried the income to above 
$100.00 a day. This would be for a limited time 
only, of course, as the steady lowering of the 
number of stock layers (by sales) would shrink 
the egg product. The gross income would not 
be all profit, there are the food, labor and in¬ 
cidental expenses to come out of it. It makes 
no difference that about all the food there is 
raised on the farm; if sold to the hens the hen 
account should be charged market prices for it. 
We don’t know whether the hens are paid (in 
the account) for their manure, but it is a very 
valuable fertilizer and worth many dollars; 
about three thousand bushels of this rich fer¬ 
tilizer is made there on the farm, and goes back 
onto the farm every year. And how it makes 
the crops grow! One year, Mr. Van Dreser put 
550 pounds of hen manure on a measured acre of 
wheat and sowed another acre right alongside 
of it without any fertilizer; the acre with hen 
manure produced 59^ bushels of wheat and the 
other acre but 31. The hen gives back to the 
land in the shape of manure, a larger proportion 
of the fertilizing elements in the food than any 
other animal. A writer in the Rural New 
Yorker says that forty to fifty bushels of sun¬ 
flower seed per acre is an average crop. Mr. 
Van Dreser raised a measured nine-tenths of an 
acre of sunflowers last year and the bagged pro¬ 
duct was 140 bushels of seed. A letter from the 
thresherman (now before me) says: “ My sieves 
were not designed to clean sunflower seed so that 
not all was saved, some seed went to waste in 
the chaff. ” As the chaff went into the scratch¬ 
ing litter in the hen pens, these did not go to 
Waste—the hens got them! 
There are ample evidences, there on the Van 
Dreser Farm, of his being a thorough, up-to- 
date farmer. The best of farm machinery and 
tools were in use and the best of crops growing 
or being harvested. A field of twenty-five 
acres of mixed oats and peas (Canada field peas) 
was being harvested on the day I was there; 
there were eighty-four bushels of seed sown on 
this piece of land, at the rate of two bushels of 
oats to one of peas. There were raised this sea¬ 
son 11^ acres of buckwheat and ten acres of 
wheat; two years ago nine hundred bushels of 
wheat were harvested—and all of this farm 
work revolves around the poultry; the hens run 
the farm! 
Poultry Plant Holds First Place. 
Perhaps the most remarkable feature of this 
story is that a highly successful stock farm has 
been turned into a poultry farm, and everything 
is now subordinated to the poultry. We hear of 
many farms which, being unsuccessful in general 
farming, etc., have been turned into poultry 
farms and thus made successful, but we do not 
recall another case just like this. Mr. Van 
Dreser and his brother bought the farm, about 
forty years ago, and tried hard to make a living 
and pay the interest on the mortgage by gen¬ 
eral farming. After several years of this work 
they were compelled to face the fact that they 
were not gaining an inch, and then they turned 
their attention to thoroughbred stock raising, 
going into Holsteins just on the flood tide. Suc¬ 
cess crowned their work, reputation and good 
sales came to them and Mr. Henry Van Dreser 
was in demand as a judge at shows and fairs, and 
became a popular speaker at Farmers’ Insti¬ 
tutes in several states. The house being rather 
crowded by two growing families, the older 
brother grasped the opportunity to buy a fine 
farm near by and sold out his half of the farm to 
his brother Henry. No particular attention had 
been given to poultry until Mr. Van Dreser’s 
adopted son, who was educated at Cornell Uni¬ 
versity, came home very enthusiastic about it. 
Not having much encouragement, he deter¬ 
mined to go ahead on his own account and began 
excavating a basement under the carriage house, 
working at the job during the noon hour and at 
odd moments, lest his father should think he 
was neglecting the regular farm work. Noting 
the youth’s devotion to his idea, Mr. Van Dreser 
decided that he should start right, and bought 
him thirty White Leghorns of Mr. Wyckoff, 
whose stock, bred for laying, had attained an 
average egg yield of 196 eggs in a year; by buy¬ 
ing a stock of pedigreed egg layers, the young 
man secured the advantage of the accumulated 
momentum of many years’ selection and breed¬ 
ing, and success crowned their efforts from the 
first. The poultry business grew and grew; its 
greater profitableness being manifest, every¬ 
thing was subordinated to that, and the end is 
not yet. Mr. Van Dreser intends that the busi¬ 
ness shall continue to grow. 
—Reliable Poultry Journal. 
78 
