Then get a start with a new breed, buy at least four sittings of eggs in a single season, paying not over $2.00 per sitting.  Keep all the pullets and a half dozen of the best cockerels.  The next spring pen these pullets up with the best cockerels, and use none but eggs from this pen for hatching.  That fall sell all of the young cockerels and all the old scrub hens.  The second spring the two old roosters from the original purchased eggs are used with the general flock.  From this time on the entire flock is pure bred and should remain so.

Each year when the chicks are about six or eight weeks old pick out the largest, most vigorous male chick from each brood.  Mark these by clipping the web of the foot or putting on leg bands.  From those so marked the breeding cockerels for the next season are later selected.  When you pick the good cockerels pick out all runty looking pullets and cut off the last joint of the hind toe.  These runts are later to be eaten or sold.  The more surplus chicks raised, the more strictly can the selection be made.

This system of picking the best cockerel from each brood and discarding the poorest pullets is the most practical method known of building up a vigorous, quick growing and early laying strain.

When we allow the entire flock of many different ages to grow up before the selection is made it is impossible to select intelligently.

Every third or fourth year an extra cock bird may be purchased provided you are sure you are getting a specimen from a better flock than your own.  Swapping roosters or eggs every year is poor policy.  If your neighbor has better stock than you, get his blood pure and sell off your own, but do not keep a barnyard full of scrubs who can trace their ancestry to every flock in the neighborhood.

Keep Only Workers.

On many farms few eggs are gathered from October to January.  This is a season when eggs bring the best prices.  To secure eggs at this season, the first requisite is that the pullets be hatched between the first of March and the middle of May, or, in the case of Leghorns, between the first of April and the first of June.  Pullets hatched later than these dates are a source of expense during the fall and early winter.  On the other hand, it is an unnecessary waste of effort to hatch pullets before the dates mentioned, because, if hatched too early, they will molt in the fall and stop laying the same as old hens.

Pullets must be well fed and cared for if expected to develop in the time allowed.  As they begin to show signs of maturity they should be gotten into permanent quarters.  If allowed to begin laying while roosting in coops or in trees they will be liable to quit when changed to new quarters.  If possible the coops should be gradually moved toward the hen-house and the pullets gotten into quarters without excitement or confinement.  The poultry-house should have an ample circulation of fresh air.  Young stock that have been roosting in open coops are liable to catch cold if confined in tight houses.