Green food, however, should be given the bird at the most convenient hour in between the other feedings. If to save time in feeding was an object, a very good schedule is to feed corn first thing in the morning, green food at about ten o’clock, and, between two and three, the exact quantity of mash as described. If mash alone is fed, it is best to feed each time only what the birds will clean up in from thirty to forty minutes, the troughs in which it is placed then being removed.
NO. 3 LAYING HOUSE FILLED WITH 1500 PULLETS TWO WEEKS FROM THE RANGE
CHAPTER XXV
$6.41 Per Hen Per Year Corning Method and Strain Enabling Others to Better $6.41
The figures at the head of this chapter have become famous, and, perhaps, in the way of small things, represent as great a bone of contention as has been squabbled over for many a year. And yet there really was nothing so extraordinary in the profit. It represented a large amount of careful work and study, a keen business administration, a careful looking after of all the little details, the preserving of all by-products and selling them at a figure which was actually under their true value, as was proven in later years by better prices obtained.
For instance, the fertilizer made on the Farm has been so handled that its returns to the owners are much greater than when these figures were given to the public. The Corning Egg Farm was very much criticised in numerous statements made in the different papers throughout the country as to the authenticity of these figures, and, to put it in clear Anglo-Saxon, many writers indulged quite freely in the word so much used by one of the distinguished Presidents of the United States, and threw the lie indiscriminately at everything and everybody connected with The Corning Egg Farm.
After a time the humor of the situation dawned upon those who were being so adversely criticized. The fact is, the critics were people who wanted to gauge everything in the World by their own little yard stick. They did not themselves know how to make $6.41 per hen per year, and, therefore, they reasoned it out that the man did not exist who could. One fact entirely overlooked by these profound writers on poultry subjects was that two dollars of this profit was made by the sale of the hen at the end of ten months of laying.
In the last few years there have appeared in the advertising columns of numerous publications, claims by a man selling a book in which he asserts he made $120.00 per hen, in twelve months, in a back-yard. Another individual blossomed forth with a statement of ten dollars and fifty odd cents profit per hen per year, but these statements did not excite widespread criticism. They were statements of men who were doing a back-yard business, with from ten to twenty hens, and were, therefore, simply looked upon as ridiculous and not entitled to serious consideration.
$6.41 Not Extravagant Claim
But The Corning Egg Farm “$6.41 per hen, per year” was not an extravagant claim, and the figures showing just exactly how it had been accomplished were plainly set forth. It was not done with twenty hens in a back-yard, but on a large, commercial scale, and an extensive business was in active operation.