Chapter 23

THE FIRST HATCH

On February 3 the incubator lamps were lighted under the first invoice of one thousand eggs. The incubating cellar was to Sam's liking, and he felt confident that three weeks of strict attention to temperature, moisture, and the turning of eggs, would bring results beyond my expectations.

After the seventh day, on which he had tested or candled the eggs, he was willing to promise almost anything in the way of a hatch, up to seventy-five or eighty per cent. In the intervals of attendance on the incubators he was hard at work on the brooder-house, which must be ready for its first occupants by the 25th. Everything went smoothly until the 18th. That morning Sam met me with a long face.

"Something went wrong with one of my lamps last night," said he. "I looked at them at ten o'clock and they were all right, but at six this morning one of the thermometers was registering 122°, and the whole batch was cooked."

"Not the whole thousand, Sam!"

"No, but 170 fertile eggs, and that spoils a twenty-dollar bill and a lot of good time. What in the name of the black man ever got into that lamp of mine is more than I know. It's just my luck!"

"It's everybody's luck who tries to raise chickens by wholesale, and we must copper it. Don't be downed by the first accident, Sam; keep fighting and you'll win out."

The brooder-house was ready when the first chicks picked the shells on the 24th, and within thirty-six hours we had 503 little white balls of fluff to transfer from the four incubators to the brooder-house. We put about a hundred together in each of five brooders, fed them cut oats and wheat with a little coarse corn meal and all the fresh milk they could drink, and they throve mightily.

The incubators were filled again on the 26th, and from that hatch we got 552 chicks. On the 21st of March they were again filled, and on the 13th of April we had 477 more to add to the colony in the brooder-house. For the last time we started the lamps April 15th, and on the 6th of May we closed the incubating cellar and found that 2109 chicks had been hatched from the 4000 eggs. The last hatch was the best of all, giving 607. I don't think we have ever had as good results since, though to tell the truth I have not attempted to keep an exact count of eggs incubated. My opinion is that fifty per cent is a very good average hatch, and that one should not expect more.

In September, when the young birds were separated, the census report was 723 pullets and 764 cockerels, showing an infant mortality of 622, or twenty-nine per cent. The accidents and vicissitudes of early chickenhood are serious matters to the unmothered chick, and they must not be overlooked by the breeder who figures his profits on paper.

After the first year I kept no tabs on the chickens hatched; my desire was to add each year 600 pullets to my flock, and after the third season to dispose of as many hens. It doesn't pay to keep hens that are more than two and a half years old. I have kept from 1200 to 1600 laying hens for the past six years. I do not know what it costs to feed one or all of them, but I do know what moneys I have received for eggs, young cockerels, and old hens, and I am satisfied.

There is a big profit in keeping hens for eggs if the conditions are right and the industry is followed, in a businesslike way, in connection with other lines of business; that is, in a factory farm. If one had to devote his whole time to the care of his plant, and were obliged to buy almost every morsel of food which the fowls ate, and if his market were distant and not of the best, I doubt of great success; but with food at the lowest and product at the highest, you cannot help making good money. I do not think I have paid for food used for my fowls in any one year more than $500; grits, shells, meat meal, and oil meal will cover the list. I do not wish to induce any man or woman to enter this business on account of the glowing statements which these pages contain. I am ideally situated. I am near one of the best markets for fine food; I can sell all the eggs my hens will lay at high prices; food costs the minimum, for it comes from my own farm; I utilize skim-milk, the by-product from another profitable industry, to great advantage; and I had enough money to carry me safely to the time of product. In other words, I could build my factory before I needed to look to it for revenue. I do not claim that this is the only way, but I do claim that it is the way for the fore-handed middle-aged man who wishes to change from city to country life without financial loss. Younger people with less means can accomplish the same results, but they must offset money by time. The principle of the factory farm will hold as well with the one as with the other.

To intensify farming is the only way to get the fat of the land. The nations of the old world have nearly reached their limit in food production. They are purchasers in the open market. This country must be that market; and it behooves us to look to it that the market be well stocked. There is land enough now and to spare, but will it be so fifty or a hundred years hence? Our arid lands will be made fertile by irrigation, but they will add only a small percentage to the amount already in quasi-cultivation. Our future food supplies must be drawn largely from the six million farms now under fences. These farms must be made to yield fourfold their present product, or they will fall short, not only of the demands made upon them, but also of their possibilities. That is why I preach the gospel of intensive farming, for grain, hay, market, and factory farm alike.

I will put the chickens out of the way for the present, referring to them from time to time and indicating their general management, the cost of their houses and food, and the amount of money received for eggs and fowls. I do not think my plant would win the approval of fanciers, and it is not in all ways up to date; but it is clean, healthy, and commodious, and the birds attend as strictly to business as a reasonable owner could wish. I shall be glad to show it to any one interested enough to search it out, and to go into the details of the business and show how I have been able to make it so remunerative.

Sam is with me no longer. For three years he did good service and saved money, and the lurid nose grew dim. There is, however, a limit to human endurance. Like victims of other forms of circular insanity, the dipsomaniac completes his cycle in an uncertain period and falls upon bad times. For a month before we parted company I saw signs of relapse in Sam. He was loquacious at times, at other times morose. He talked about going into business for himself, and his nose took on new color. I labored with him, but to no purpose; the spirit of unrest was upon him, and it had to work its own. I held him firm long enough to secure another man, and then we parted, he to do business for himself, I to get on as best I could. Sam painted his nose and raised chickens and other things until his savings had flown; then he got a position with a woman who runs a broiler plant, and for two years he has given good service. He will probably continue in ways of well-doing until the next cycle is complete, when the beacon light will blaze afresh and he will follow it on to the rocks. Such a man is more to be pitied than condemned, for his anchor is sure to drag at times.