The price of chicks at the Petaluma hatcheries is from six to eight cents each. We expect to raise enough pullets to make up for the accidental losses, and to renew bulk of the flock each year. The number required will, of course, depend upon the loss. This loss will be much less when the chicks are obtained from a modern moisture controlled hatchery, than from the box type incubator. I think a 33 per cent. loss is a liberal estimate, but as I am treading on unproven ground, I will make that loss 40 per cent., which is on a par with old style methods. To replace 1,000 hens, this will require 3,500 chicks at a cost of about two hundred and fifty dollars.
Green pasturage throughout the year will materially cut down the cost of feed. The corn consumed out of the hoppers will be about one bushel per hen. The beef scrap will also be less than with yarded fowls, perhaps twenty-five cents per hen. Now, of the corn we will raise on the land, at least ten acres. This should yield us five hundred bushels. This leaves fifteen hundred bushels of corn to be purchased. At the present high rates, this will cost $1,000 which, added to beef scrap cost, makes an outside feed cost of $1,500. The seed cost of rye, rape, cow-peas, etc., will amount to about $50 per annum. For expense of production we have:
| Interest and upkeep of plant | $600.00 |
| Chicks | 250.00 |
| Purchased corn | 1000.00 |
| Beef scrap and grit | 500.00 |
| Seed | 50.00 |
| Team feed | 100.00 |
| ------- | |
| $2,500.00 |
This figures out the cost of production at a little more than a dollar per hen. The income from the place should be about as follows: Eleven hundred cockerels sold as squab broilers at 40 cents each, $440.00; four hundred and seventy-five old hens at 30 cents, $140.00.
The receipts from egg yield are, of course, impossible of very accurate calculation, for it is here that the personal element that determines success or failure enters. The Arkansas per-hen-day figures (see last chapter), multiplied by the average quotation for extras in the New York market, will be as fair as any, and certainly cannot be considered a high estimate, as it is only 113 eggs per hen per year.
| Eggs per hen day | Price per doz Extras in New York | Income for month from 2000 layers | |
| January | .32 | $ .30 | $494.00 |
| February | .30 | .29 | 404.00 |
| March | .62 | .22 | 700.00 |
| April | .38 | .19 | 350.00 |
| May | .44 | .19 | 429.00 |
| June | .42 | .18 | 377.00 |
| July | .34 | .21 | 367.00 |
| August | .38 | .22 | 429.00 |
| September | .21 | .25 | 262.00 |
| October | .22 | .28 | 316.00 |
| November | .18 | .33 | 267.00 |
| December | .15 | .32 | 246.00 |
| ------ | |||
| Total | $4,641.00 |
The total income as figured will be $5,221. From this subtract the cost of production, and we have still nearly $3,000, which is to be combined item of wages and profit. We have entered no labor bill because this is to be a one-man farm, and with the assistance of the public hatchery and co-operative marketing association, which will send a wagon right to a man's door to gather the eggs, it is entirely feasible for one man to attend to two thousand hens. In the rush spring season other members of the family will have to turn out and help, or a man may be hired to attend the plowing and rougher work.
This is a good handsome income, and yet the above price of the man's labor—it is only about one dollar per hen, which has always been the estimated profit of successful poultry keeping. As a matter of fact, this profit is seldom reached under the old system of poultry keeping, not because the above gross income cannot be reached, but because the expenses are greater. Under the present methods, with the exception of the rearing of the young chicks, one man can easily take care of three thousand hens. Indeed, practically the only work in their care is cultivating the ground and hauling around and dumping into hoppers, about two loads of feed per week.
But, young chicks must be reared, and this is more laborious. For this reason I advise going into some other industry on a part of the land, which will not require attention in the young chick season. One of the best things for this purpose is the cultivation of cane fruits as blackberries, raspberries and dewberries. The work of caring for these can be made to fall wholly without the young chick season. Peaches and grapes for a slower profit can be added, but spraying and cultivation of these is more liable to take spring labor. All these fruits have the advantage of doing well in the same kind of soil recommended for chickens. Young chickens may be grown around such berry crops and removed to permanent quarters before the berries ripen. Strawberries would be a very poor crop because their labor falls in the chick season.
Another plan, and perhaps a better one, is to have about three fields, and rotate in such a manner that a marketable crop may be always kept growing in the third field. Any crop may be selected, the chief labor of which falls between July and the following March. Late cabbage and potatoes, or celery, will do if the ground is suitable for these crops. Kale and spinach are staple fall crops. Fall lettuce could also be grown. If the market is glutted on such crops, they can be fed out at home. Whenever a field is vacant, have some crop growing on it, if only for purposes of green manuring. Never let sandy ground lie fallow.