His Hens Can’t Think, So He Thinks for Them

The day I visited J. A. Lothrop’s farm at Crete, Neb., it was blistering hot. I found him lying in the shade of one of the many trees that dot his spacious, well-kept lawn. Except for the occasional jiggle of the blade of grass between his tightened lips he appeared asleep.“Never make any money sleeping, “ I smiled when he became aware of the presence.

“Wasn’t asleep, “ he said. “Just thinking. That’s one thing hens can’t do. I do it for them.”

What he was trying to figure out, he went on to say, was whether it was going to rain and, if so, what a good rain would do to the corn crop. He was in the market for some oats for his hens and had been buying from day to day, he said, “just watching the weather and trying to figure whether this is the time to stock up on oats.”

It was late July.

“Oats are all threshed now,” I said. “What’s corn got to do with this price?”

“Lots. If we get rain to make corn, naturally prices will drop. Wheat, bran, oats and other feeds will follow in sympathy. I discovered this about five years ago, Since then I’ve been studying the markets and buying my feeds about 25 per cent cheaper than I used to.”“It pays, then, to think for your hens?”

“You bet it does! I’ve built up my poultry business to where it is now earning me $8,000 a year. Poultry is my main line, but if the bottom dropped out of it tomorrow I’d still make a good living. I’d have cream, livestock, fruit, grain and a little nursery stock to sell. Besides, there are dividend cheques from the commercial investments I have made with some of my surplus profits.”

The son of an Iowa merchant, born and raise in the city, Lothrop wandered west and, after knocking about a bit, discovered that he needed more education. He went through Doane College at Crete, graduating fifteen years ago. His wife too was raised there in town and their romance developed in the classrooms. He bought 125 acres the year he got through school.

“I don’t know yet why I bought it except that I wanted to work in the open and be my own boss. And of course I wanted to keep close to my girl. Come to think of it, that was the real reason. I knew absolutely nothing about farming. And my college course, liberal arts, didn’t help me much. We were married the year after I bought the place. Perhaps you can see some significance between the date of our wedding, and the fact that it took me just about two years to learn how to hitch a team properly.

“It was hard work the first few years. The farm didn’t even have a fence on it. But we did the best we could as we floundered around to get a start. Along about 1915 a representative of the Nebraska Agricultural College asked us to keep records of our flock of hens. At the close of the year they told us that our accounts were the outstanding feature of their year’s work. And we found out that our chickens were paying.

“On the strength of this we went in a little heavier as soon found we were making a comfortable living on our hens.

“But I wasn’t satisfied. Our feed bill, for instance, was a thorn until I got studying the markets and found, as I told you, how I could cut the bill by 25 per cent. Often this means laying in a whole year’s supply at one time, but I’ll borrow at six per cent any time I can make it pay me four times the interest charges.

“My feed buying experience gave me a hunch that I might be able to do a little better with our eggs. We were selling locally and, while prices were good, I saw a vast difference between what we were paid and the market quotations in the newspapers. I questioned the college experts to find out a little on the grade I read of in the papers. I also procured the names of a few firms in New York. I inquired about the market, and I sent a case of home-sorted eggs by express.

“They brought top prices. Since then, with few exceptions, I have been shipping by express to New York and Boston. The little work in grading and selecting my markets has doubled my profits.

“Grading alone means a cent an egg more than if I shipped ‘hennery run.’ Ordinarily I averaged three cents an egg the year round.

“I have three grades for the eggs I ship—extras, firsts and seconds. Extras are eggs snow-white, smooth shell and uniform in size, weighing at least 57 ½ pounds to the 36-dozen case. Firsts show the same quality and uniformity but are smaller. The poundage is 54 to 57 ½. Second are below 54 pounds. Real small or off-quality eggs are sold locally. But I don’t have many I can’t ship.

“Several years ago I noticed storage eggs, in the fall, brought a pretty fair margin over the price paid when they were put away. This gave me an idea and I made arrangements with a local creamery to rent space at 50 cents a case for the season. My first experience proved profitable and my storage business has grown to upward of several hundred cases a year. This season I stored 125 cases. Storage eggs are worth from $1 to $5 a case more in the fall. Several times my eggs out of store have sold for more than the current fresh eggs.”

From January until the middle of May, Lothrop hatches baby chicks. Last year he sold 25,000 chicks at 16 cents each. He has increased his incubator capacity for 1926 to 60,000 eggs. This is almost three times his present needs, but custom hatching cuts the overhead. In advertising he guarantee the chicks t be from eggs that would grade No. 1 or better on the New York market.

Several years ago Lothrop started out to change the shape of his eggs. The ordinary egg of the American Leghorn is somewhat pointed. He didn’t like it and, by hatching eggs which had less point and more circumference, and line-breeding the chickens, he has developed an egg that has found great favor on the market and which has won him sweepstakes, trophies and ribbons at state poultry and egg shows.

We walked through the houses. Here and there he picked a handful of eggs from the nests to show me the success he has had in changing the shape. Out of several hundred eggs we looked at, less than a half-dozen were the ordinary pointed type. All of the eggs were uniform in shape and shell texture.

In addition to changing his eggs, Lothrop has been breeding for a little more weight in the birds. In this way he gets around the market objection to Leghorns. The trade wants poultry weighing four pounds or better. The average Leghorn does not attain the desired poundage and is penalized.

See around a dozen eggs in each nest I imagined his flock average must be at least 200 eggs per layer. I was surprised on inquiring to find that he was very well satisfied with 160 to 175 eggs.

“I don’t try for forced production,” he explained. “Often I keep my good breeders until they are four years old. What I’m after is vigor, vitality and quality. Let the fellow who buys my chicks force feed for eggs. When he has worked them to the limit he can come and buy more chicks. But I can’t bring on a new crop of quality breeders within a year and maintain the health and vigor necessary to back up the guarantee I put on my chicks and eggs.

“Quality is my big asset. It sells my chicks and eggs at top prices. My success in this respect is no different than men have attained in other lines of business.”