February eggs. If the reader will refer to
the tables of hatchability and mortality he will see that for our
northern states this is one of the worst seasons for hatching. A
hatchability of 40 per cent, times a liveability of 50 per cent,
gives a net liveability of 20 per cent. Now, anyone with the ability
to produce high grade eggs at that time a year, could get about 40c
a dozen for them, which raises the egg cost per broiler to about 17
cents. The feed cost per broiler is small, usually estimated at 12
cents, and this makes a cost of 29 cents. Now, let us allow a cent
for expense of selling charges and forget all about investment, fuel
and incidentals, we have left a margin of 20 cents.

Before going farther let us look at the labor bill. Suppose it is a
one-man plant. Suppose the owner sets a value on his services of
$1,200 per annum. That is pretty good, but few men who set a lower
value on their services will have accumulated enough capital to go
into the business. At 20 cents each it will take 6,000 broilers to
make $1,200. That will take 30,000 eggs and at three settings will
require 40 240-egg incubators, which, of a good make, will cost
$1,260. To spread the hatching out over a longer period is to run
into cheap prices on the one hand, or a still impossible egg season
on the other. It will take upwards of a hundred brooders to house
the chicks.

There is no use of going farther till we have solved these
difficulties. First we have more work than one man can do; second,
we require a number of hatchable eggs that cannot be bought in
winter without a campaign of advertising and canvassing for them,
that would make them cost double our previous figure. To produce
them oneself would require a flock of 2,500 hens. When a man gets to
that point in the business he is out of the broiler business and an
egg farmer, and will do the same thing, hatch the chicks when eggs
are cheap and fertile, selling his surplus cockerels for 25 cents
each and permit the storage man to freeze them until the following
spring to compete with the broiler man's expensively produced goods.

The effort at early broiler production was a natural result of the
combination of the idea of artificial incubation with our
grandmother's pride in having the first setting hen. But in the
present age the man who attempts it is rowing against the current of
economical production, for the cheaply produced broiler can be
stored until the season of scarci