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.