Started with 60 Buff Rock Eggs
We purchased an incubator with the capacity of sixty eggs, being fearful of attempting the operation of a larger machine, because, like a great many novices, we had the feeling that an incubator was a very dangerous thing, and that anyone without a vast amount of experience should not attempt to handle it. We placed in this diminutive machine sixty Buff Rock eggs, and obtained a very fair hatch. With daily contact our fear of the machine decreased, and we exchanged it for one with a capacity of one hundred and twenty-five eggs, and this, in turn, was exchanged for one holding two hundred and fifty eggs.
INTERIOR STERILE LAYING HOUSE NO. 3 IN 1910
We obtained fairly large flocks of youngsters that season, but, as we had the usual hallucination that poultry culture was really a miracle, and required neither work, capital, nor brains, that all you had to do was to accept the profit and the chickens did it all themselves, we did not get so very far. The growth of the birds was so slow they did not reach a profitable weight until the broiler market had dropped the price to its lowest level. The pullets which we carried through the winter never produced an egg, for the simple reason that we had never studied the question out as to how the hen produces an egg. In other words, our lack of knowledge of the right methods was the reason for charging up a considerable loss instead of profit so far as the first season’s work with hens went.
We very early discovered there must have been a considerable amount of fiction in the writings on the squab industry. One reads that a pair of pigeons eats nothing like the amount of food which is required for one hen, and that they never eat more than their exact wants require, and that when they have young in the nest, this amount is very slightly increased. We found, however, that they ate in season and out of season. In fact one recalls, in this connection, and with considerable amusement, the song, in the light opera “Wang,” of the elephant who ate all day and the elephant who ate all night.
During our work with pigeons we tried out a number of different varieties: Homers, Dragoons, Runt Dragoon crosses, Homer Runt crosses, Maltese Hens, and the various crosses with Runt Dragoons; also Carneaux. We were led to buy these fancy breeds through the stories of extreme prices paid for large squabs, and we bred some heavy weights only to find, from the commission man who made a specialty of these birds, that it was impossible to pay the price which such birds were really worth, as trade for this class was extremely limited.
Very early in our experience we realized that the poultry side of our experiment was very much more to our liking and offered so much greater and more profitable outlook for our energies that we rang down the curtain on Squab raising—and turned our attention exclusively to the Hen.
While our minds were still running in the line of poultry for market purposes we tried out the Black Orpingtons, the idea being that, on account of their size, they would make ideal roasting fowls. We found, however, that they were a very much inbred variety, and it was almost impossible to hatch the eggs. Out of one hundred eggs, for which we paid twenty dollars, eight chicks hatched, and these were not of sufficient vitality to live.
ENTRANCE TO THE FARM IN 1909