The middle of the month saw the hens producing above seventeen eggs a day. December was started with an output of forty, and from that the birds ran into larger numbers daily until the last of December, when, with the mercury registering well down around zero, they were turning out one hundred eggs a day. The increase in the egg output continued steadily, and we found that March was the record month, but the highest single day was in April, when the pen produced one hundred and seventy eggs.
AS YOU APPROACH THE CORNING EGG FARM FROM THE PUBLIC HIGHWAY,
IN 1911
Showing 264-Foot Brooder House, Breeding Cockerel House and Office
We were well satisfied with the result of the Winter’s work with these pullets, and, although we did not have the knowledge that has since come to us in feeding for eggs, the output was a most creditable one, and we found a ready market at a good price.
Early in the Fall we had mapped out our plans for a very decided increase in plant for the coming season. The excavation for the Incubator Cellar, sixteen by fifty feet, had been made, and the Brooder House above it was enclosed without difficulty before weather of any great severity overtook us. We were blessed with a very late Fall, and mild weather continued, with only occasional dips, well into December, 1907.
We installed in the Cellar ten incubators, with a capacity of three hundred and ninety eggs each. The Brooder House, with its arrangement for Hovers and Nursery pens, was all completed, and the month of March found us placing eggs in the machines.
In the Fall of 1907 we had enlarged our Breeding House, so that we were able to place in it some two hundred and fifty breeders. Out of our original pen of thirty, we had lost two. From different sources we bought yearling hens, and with our original twenty-eight, made up the breeding pen.
Of course, as we had planned to endeavor to produce some three thousand pullets for the Fall of 1908, we were obliged to very materially supplement the product of our own breeders, with eggs from other sources, and this we did, buying eggs from different breeders, in widely separated territories.
As the hatching season advanced we added one more incubator to our battery of ten, and we placed in these incubators a total of eleven thousand eight hundred and four eggs, of which two thousand and ninety-six showed dead germs and clear eggs on the fourteenth day test.
The resulting number of chicks placed in the Brooder House was five thousand eight hundred and sixty-six for the entire season.