PROFITABLE EGG FARMING. 
in sight, but we fear when she arrives, she will 
be like the two-minute horse—useless for any 
other purpose. Of what avail is it, if we get 
her henship to the point of laying 200 eggs per 
year and we cannot reproduce her kind in paying 
numbers or rear those chickens which we do 
succeed in inducing to come from the shell? 
There are many sides to the poultry business 
and twelve months in every year, all of which 
should be figured in looking forward and weighed 
in looking backward. A hen laying an average of 
ten to twelve dozen eggs per year usually throws 
strong chicks easily reared and consequently 
showing a splendid profit in the surplus as 
market poultry, and in the second season with 
the strong, sturdy pullets ready to do business 
from the date of their first egg until the hatchet 
intervenes later in their lives. We think the 
striving for the 200-eggs-per-year hen respons¬ 
ible in part for the large mortality in chicks 
between the egg and maturity, but much of it is 
due to ignorance, or her sister, carelessness. 
That the business, taken the country over, 
pays a good margin of profit on the capital in¬ 
vested in spite of a heavy mortality in small 
chicks, would seem to argue that this is one of 
the most fruitful fields for scientific thought and 
research. If we can eliminate fifty per cent, of 
this mortality, do not we show nearly a corres¬ 
ponding increase in the profits? Certainly it 
would show twenty-five per cent. 
The skillful feeder will be found to possess a 
keen eye for- the appearance of perfect health 
and will be ever on the lookout for the departure 
from the sign posted upon every living, healthy 
beast or bird in the universe. The difference 
between a bird out of condition and the one in 
perfect health to the old breeder, is as marked as 
between brightly burnished metal and the same 
when suffering from tarnishing and neglect. 
Well Bred Chicks Are Naturally Hardy. 
Feeding with some end in view, breeding 
along the same lines, there should be steady 
headway made from year to year, and while 
there may be an occasional set-back, for we are 
all human, the average progress should be sure. 
Well-born chicks—perhaps we had better say 
chicks born of strong, hardy parents,—come 
into this world about as well developed and 
fitted for the stern battle of life as anything we 
know of. Given half an opportunity, fed 
within the bounds of common sense,and properly 
brooded, it seems practically impossible to kill 
them. They have an ample coat of down 
which protects them from almost any kind of 
weather for short periods. Given a well regu¬ 
lated brooder they will cheerfully march out into 
zero temperature and apparently be as happy 
as though the sun stood high in the heavens 
and the temperature registered 90 degrees in the 
shade, and they certainly grow much better than 
when placed under the latter conditions. Fed 
improperly or kept at suicidal temperature or 
being unfortunate enough to have weak parents 
on one or both sides, and the reverse condition 
seems to be the result ; they are about as deli¬ 
cate, puny and unsatisfactory atoms of mortali¬ 
ty as the universe produces. 
By closely studying nature’s methods, we 
would find that the mother hen, leaving the 
nest when the chicks are one or two days 
of age, does not have a chance to lead the way 
to a dough dish and fill them with an indigest¬ 
ible mash. On the contrary, she starts out on 
the hunt. Perhaps she lands in the garden 
the first shot, and to the owner’s consternation, 
proceeds to tear up the newly made land in her 
endeavors to seek tid-bits for her charges. If 
she is undisturbed, she makes a good display by 
nightfall and unearths quite a little food.sueceed- 
ing by this time in filling the crops of her numer¬ 
ous family. If we could dissect them, we would 
not find any carefully prepared mixture of one 
to four or one to five, or “ sixteen to one,” or any 
other startling array of chemical combines, but 
we would find a bug, a worm, an occasional seed 
that the owner so carefully planted a few days 
previously, together with a few of the weed 
seeds which he did not plant, and plenty of grit. 
This composite mass has been gathered together 
in ten or twelve hours’ time, with a liberal 
sprinkling of exercise thrown in, and if the 
weather conditions are favorable and our mother 
hen does not pull the youngsters around through 
the wet grass too much in the morning, she 
usually comes out at the end of the season with 
about as many full-sized chickens as she started 
from the nest with. 
The usual methods when the old lady brings 
off her family, are to shut her off in a coop and 
bring on all the wet mash she and the chicks 
ought to eat for a full day’s time, and dump it 
down on a board in front of the coop. Some of 
this is eaten, most of it forms a door viat for the 
youngsters, and in one-half hour’s time looks 
much like the dirt surrounding the coop. Ly¬ 
ing in the hot sun does not take long to start 
102 
