Pure-Bred Chickens Will Give More Eggs, March 29, 1923

School Will Have Incubator House. . . Class in Agriculture Will Get Practical Experience in Hatching. Boys Will Do Building. . . Addition Will Pay for Itself

An incubator house is to be built on the grounds of the Chapel Hill school by the members of the agriculture class. A lot running out from the main school yard, back of M.E. Hogan’s residence, will be used for the new building.

The school boys themselves will do the construction. The material will cost, altogether, not more than about $45. This will be made up in time by setting apart a certain percentage from the proceeds of the sale of chickens hatched by the incubators.

The school now has two incubators with a total capacity of 300 eggs. They have been loaned out temporarily, but will be called in and placed in the new house. The total incubator capacity will be increased to 500 eggs later.

This will be a means of valuable training for the boys in raising poultry. Some of them have begun the work already, but here they will operate under the immediate supervision of their teacher, R.P. Harris, and will learn the details of hatching and brooding more thoroughly than they can by themselves. There will be a poultry yard around the incubator house. The house will have a ditch around it to carry the water off, and it will have a cement floor eventually.

Convincing proof of the wisdom of getting pure-bred eggs was given this week when the boys of the 6th and 7th grades made out the egg-laying records of their farm flocks. Walter Oldham, who lives five miles south of Chapel Hill on the Pittsboro road, was at the top of the list with an average egg production of 71 per cent. This record was made by pullets from eggs from trap-nested fowls bred at State College.

Frank Pendergraft was second, his hens showing an egg production of 64 per cent. The third best showing was made by the hens whose record was kept by John Williams, who lives out on the Hillsboro road. The lowest records were those on farms where no attention had been paid to getting pure-bred eggs.

The boys count the eggs each day and since the number of laying hens is known exactly, the calculations of the percentages is a simple matter. There are 35 boys in the class. Of course, in most cases the flocks upon which they report actually belong to their parents, but it is the boys who gather the eggs and keep the records.

From the front page of The Chapel Hill Weekly, Thursday, March 29, 1923