We found that the eggs purchased did not produce anything like the number of chicks, that is, strong, livable chicks, that did the eggs coming from our own breeding pen, which proved to us that the method of feeding and caring for breeding stock, pursued by others, fell very far short of the results gotten by our own methods.
We Count Only Livable Chicks
The lesson of incubation, which it is so difficult to make people understand, is not so much a question of how many chicks may be hatched from a given number of eggs as of how many strong, livable chicks are brought out. We very early in our hatching experience decided to count only those chicks, which were strong, and apparently capable of a steady growth and a sturdy maturity. Thus, the count of the number of chicks produced, does not really show the number which came out of the shells.
OFFICE BUILDING
We were extremely fortunate in handling the youngsters in the Brooder House, and our mortality was very low, and when the youngsters were placed in the Colony Houses, which had been built during the early Spring months, and placed out on the Range in readiness for them, they were a sturdy, vigorous crowd.
Percentage of Cockerels Low
The number of cockerels was very low, and these, as rapidly as they developed, were taken away from the pullets and placed in a fattening pen which had been provided, and as our stock was still an “unknown quantity” in Poultrydom, we marketed the larger part of them at broiler size.
The pullets came on finely, and the records show that a large number of them came into eggs when they were a few days over four months of age.
Through the connivance of an employé we made a heavy loss in the way of theft, and, when the final round-up of the pullets came, we found we had one thousand nine hundred and fifty-three.