PROFITABLE EGG FARMING. 
Semi-Detached Houses and Yards, Wyckoff Poultry Farm. 
scarce and high, and in January alone of that 
year his flocks gave him $90 worth of eggs. 
More chickens were hatched, more buildings and 
yards built, all paid for out of the egg-money, 
and for the last ten years he has been selling 
$3,000 to $4,000 worth of products a year from 
that old farm. 
The hens have paid for it all. The total in¬ 
vestment was the few dollars paid for the first 
mixed hens; all the rest is accrued earnings of 
the hens themselves. Isn’t that a cheering ex¬ 
ample? Are we not right in considering Mr. 
Wyckoff a typical poultry man? The farm is all 
paid for—was paid for by the hens. The build¬ 
ings to house them, the fences built to enclose 
the yards, the hundreds of young fruit trees set 
in the yards, together with all the cows, farm 
tools and machinery for carrying on a sixty-acre 
farm—have been paid for by those hens; and we 
know (we didn’t ask him—but we know ) there’s 
a dollar or two in the bank. Compare that con¬ 
dition with the one of fifteen years ago, when the 
weekly wages barely paid the family expenses! 
Mr. Wyckoff loves the farm, and takes honest 
pride in his prosperous looking, claen-cultivated 
fields;but he says his “farm”don’t pay any profit. 
He keeps six or eight cows and makes butter 
for market—but says there’s no money in it. 
Indirectly perhaps it pays, because the manure 
from the cows helps to enrich the fields for the 
noble crops of corn and wheat he raises for 
poultry food; then there is the pleasure one gets 
from well tilled fields; it warms the heart to see 
the crops grow. We walked back over the farm, 
and Mr. Wyckoff told us of the hard days’ works 
he had put in there, ditching and draining, and 
showed us one splendid field of eight or ten acres 
which he has “ made ” himself, reclaiming it from 
wet, rough, stumpy pasture. We suggested that 
he would be just as well off, perhaps better, if he 
sold off a part of his farm, and he said that he 
knew that, and had offered to sell thirty or forty 
acres off the rear end. As a street runs along 
the west side of his land, it would be well 
located for an independent farm, and a better 
location for a home, and a finer outlook, one 
wouldn’t find in a day’s journey. We give him 
this free ad. for the benefit of anyone wanting to 
buy land and build his own buildings. 
To return to the poultry. Mr. Wyckoff 
winters about six hundred head of laying stock. 
As he has built up a large business in cockerels 
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