The Corning Egg Farm book, by Corning himself

AVERAGE FOR FIRST TEN MONTHS OF PULLET LAYING
IN FLOCKS OF FIFTEEN HUNDRED.

On examination of this Egg Record it will be noticed that in the average number of eggs laid by the pullets, in flocks of fifteen hundred, there have been three gains, and in analyzing these averages it must be remembered that these are results obtained, not by the handling of a few pullets most carefully selected to produce a record, but of thousands, and the advance of three eggs in the average is therefore a remarkable gain.

How Corning Farm Is Able To Get Great Egg Records

The salient reasons which make possible such egg records as The Corning Egg Farm is able to show are:

1st,—Careful selection of breeders by the Corning Method, which is the only proper Method and has already been described.

2nd,—Pullets raised on free range, feeding to them a strengthening and upbuilding ration, which constantly supplies new tissues, and is, therefore, a nutritious and not a forcing food.

3rd,—Housing them in The Corning Laying House, which to-day stands unequaled, where they are practically outdoors yet protected from extremes of heat and cold, for if hens are to lay to their capacity they must be kept always in a perfectly comfortable condition.

4th,—The succulent, green food, which is so necessary to their welfare if they are to lay strongly, and which must be given to them in large quantities.

Hens on the ordinary free range, in the general run of seasons, after July 1st., cannot find succulent green food in sufficient quantities to enable them to keep up even a fair average of eggs. Receipts of eggs at all large market centers, begin to fall off at about this date, and prices correspondingly increase.

Highest Percentage of Fertility

Every observer, viewing the stock of The Corning Egg Farm, is at once convinced that the scientific Method here employed produces better birds than any other. The steady increase, from year to year, in the hatchability of the eggs towards full fertility; the strong, livable chicks, their rapid growth to maturity; and the voluntary testimony given by our customers whose ever increasing orders come back to us, year after year, all conclusively establish the fact that hens bred and raised by The Corning Method are unequaled anywhere.

For the last two years hatching eggs have been shipped from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and from the Northern part of Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, and even across the Atlantic to far away Scotland. From this widely extended territory comes the unsolicited testimony that The Corning Strain of Single Comb White Leghorns is unequaled.

At the present time the amount of labor carried on The Corning Egg Farm is one working foreman and three laborers. The latter are $1.50 a day men, and, with this force all the work of the farm is accomplished. The Houses are thoroughly cleaned, as to the dropping boards, drinking fountain stands, tops of nests, and the inside of nests where required, every day in the week and three hundred and sixty-five days in the year.

When the Colony Houses are in use they are cleaned and rebedded every two or three weeks, as required, during the first part of the Spring. After the first part of the season is over, say from July 1st., they are not cleaned as often for the reason that there is very little dampness, and so long as the Houses remain dry, the cleaning is not required.

The cost of feed in the last two years has gone up materially, and it now requires an outlay of about eighteen cents to raise a Leghorn cockerel to broiler size. The cost of raising a pullet to the laying point is forty-two and a half cents, which includes cost of incubation. The pullet, through her first ten months of laying, costs $1.15.

It is somewhat difficult to give a fixed figure as to the cost of caring for the coming breeder through the time of moult, during the months when she is producing eggs for hatching, and up to the time when she is shipped, in August, eleven months in all. Different seasons and different flocks of birds vary in the amount of food necessary during these months. Our records show, however, that the output of eggs through the moulting season from the birds which we are carrying for hatching eggs has always been enough to show a profit over the feeding cost. It would be safe to figure that the outlay will be between one dollar and forty and one dollar and fifty cents. These amounts, as given, represent the cost of feeding and the cost of labor.