HISTORY OF ANCONAS 
51 
would really be the best for com¬ 
mercial purposes. 
To settle the matter definitely in his 
own mind, Mr. Rawlings decided to pur¬ 
chase an equal number of baby chicks 
of the two breeds, have them shipped 
on the same day, and rear them to¬ 
gether. Afterwards they were housed 
separately and a correct account kept 
of food consumed, eggs laid, etc. The 
following are extracts from Mr. Raw¬ 
lings’ letters: 
“Oct. 25, 1921. 
“I explained to you last May when 
ordering chicks, that I expected to con¬ 
duct a contest between Anconas and 
White Leghorns. We really like the 
Anconas best to date, because they 
have grown faster, are a little larger 
than the Leghorns and the cockerels 
are easier to sell for table use. If they 
turn out eggs as well as the Leghorns 
in our contest, Anconas are what we 
will keep in future.” 
“Dec. 7. 
“The Anconas have started to lay, 
have been laying since Thanksgiving, 
but haven’t got an egg from my White 
Leghorns yet. The Anconas, nearly all 
of them, have nice red combs and sing 
and scratch all the time, but the Leg¬ 
horns never do sing and don’t seem to 
be as far along. We can’t understand 
it.” 
December—“Anconas laying 18%, 
Leghorns 9%.” 
Month of January—“Anconas laying 
40%, Leghorns 20%.” 
March—“Race about even.” 
In 1922 Mr. Rawlings bought Anconas 
exclusively, and again we have him 
booked for 1000 for 1923. I have his 
report of a 60% to 70% production 
from his Anconas during the warm 
months. The last letter I received is 
a summing up of the year’s activities, 
and it is interesting to note how the 
Anconas suit a discriminating trade 
as table fowl. 
“Dear Madam: — 
“I expect you would like to know 
how our chicken business is progress¬ 
ing. W'ell I will start with the baby 
chicks. When our five hundred chicks 
were three weeks old we had a cloud 
burst, drowning eighty-five of our 
chicks. I was away at the time the 
flood struck us or I might have saved 
them, but there was about four feet of 
water between our house and the little 
chick house and my wife couldn’t wade 
it. When I got there the water was 
about three inches deep all over our 
brooder house floor and chickens were 
scattered all over. I carried what 
was alive into the kitchen and my 
wife built up a good fire and they soon 
settled down in the tubs and boxes that 
we had them in and we never lost any 
more from chilling, and I supposed we 
would as they were all just as wet as 
they could be. We got the brooder 
house dried out and put them back out 
there the next morning and they have 
been fine and dandy ever since. We 
have sold a hundred and ninety some 
cockerels for fryers and have a hun¬ 
dred and eighty-seven pullets and they 
sure are a nice even bunch, much far¬ 
ther along than our pullets were last 
year at the same age. 
“The dining car trade has been fine. 
We supplied all eight of the cars with 
eggs through June and July, when our 
eggs commenced to fall off and we 
dropped a car at a time through Au¬ 
gust until since the first of September 
we have only been supplying four of 
them, that makes a case every other 
day. We have also sold them over 
600 springers and about a hundred 
hens, we get 40c a pound for springers 
and 31c for hens with the feathers off. 
Ancona cockerels are just right for 
them for springers as they want them 
to weigh about two pounds. Next year 
