With a fifty per cent. hatch and chicks at 10 cents each there would be a gross income of $5,000 annually.  From this we must subtract for eggs at 2 cents each, $2,000.  Salary for operator $1,000, wages for helper $300.  Fuel, supplies and repairs $500.  Cost of delivery and sales of chicks $200.  This leaves a residue of $1,000, which would pay a 20 per cent. interest on the necessary investment of $5,000.  Personally, I think this is about the minimum unit of hatching that would prove worth while as independent institutions.

Any increase in the percentage of the hatch would, of course, reduce the unit of size necessary for profitable operation.  Upon a single poultry plant as a duck farm the cost of operation would be materially reduced, as the operator himself would take the place of the intelligent manager and the cost of gathering eggs and the delivery of the product would be eliminated.

The most profitable method of hatchery operation undoubtedly will be upon a plan analogous to what, in creamery operation, is called centralization.  The success of this scheme depends upon the fact that transportation and agencies at country stores are relatively less important items of expense than plant construction and high salaries for skilled labor.  A hatchery with a million capacity can be built and run at not more than twice the cost of one hundred-thousand plant and better men can be kept in charge of it.  A portion of the saving will of course be expended in maintaining a system of buying eggs and selling chicks.

The material advantage of operating a hatchery in connection with a high-class egg handling and poultry packing establishment, or as one feature of a poultry community, is at once apparent, for the system of collecting the market produce will be utilized for gathering eggs and distributing chicks, each business helping the other.

The public hatchery also gives an excellent opportunity for the introduction of good stock among farmers who would be too shiftless to acquire it by ordinary methods.

CHAPTER VII

FEEDING

The old adage that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing is nowhere better illustrated than in the scientific phases of poultry feeding.  The attempted application of the common theoretical feeding standards to poultry has caused not only a great waste of time but has also resulted in expenditures for high-priced feeds when cheaper feeds would have given as good or better results.

The so-called science of food chemistry is really a rough approximation of things about which the actual facts are unknown.  Such knowledge bears the same relation to accurate science as the maps of America drawn by the early explorers do to a modern atlas.  Like these early efforts of geography the present science of food chemistry is all right if we realize its incompleteness.  In practice, the poultryman, after a general glance at the “map,” will find a more reliable guide in simpler things.