The Yakima Chicken Fancier Who Saw Forty Cents in Every Lost Chick

Leonard Schott, who for a number of years has been prominently identified with one of the leading business houses in North Yakima, has developed into a chicken fancier of the most irrepressible type. An enterprising reporter of the Yakima Republic visited Mr. Schott's famous farm near the edge of that thriving Central Washington metropolis and in the next issue tells thus entertainingly of what he saw:

"All those little chickens in the garden," is the song Leonard Schott eternally sings as he pets, feeds and tinkers with about 400 fluffy bunches of fowl life of the barred Plymouth Rock variety, these sunny days.

Three incubators are running daily opposition to the ancient hen on this fancy chicken ranch, and the profits in the business may be assumed from the pathetic remark of the popular fancier to a reporter on Monday, when one of the chicks turned over on its back and chirped its last. "There goes 40 cents," said Mr. Schott, and he sighed and the reporter laughed.

The plant, including incubators, long rows of brooders, walks and feeding apparatus, is a remarkably neat array of buildings which cost about $500 and would have cost more, but Mr. Schott did most of the work himself. Hot water pipes run everywhere over the chicks and the warm spring sunshine filters through window panes at each "walk."

The chicks are fat and contented and the proprietor ditto—particularly the latter; because he sees in the first "crop" from the incubator opened two weeks ago the broilers of April 1, which will bring on the Spokane market $4.80 per dozen. As the shipments begin fresh incubator hatchings will be put into the warm brooders, and Mr. Schott expects to keep fully 1,000 chicks in all stages of growth picking among the powdered eggs, shells, bones, etc., of the sunny walks. He has developed a fad into a growing business; and while heretofore he has supplied the Spokane market alone, he is now figuring on reaping some benefits from the Klondike excitement as it affects the sound cities.

An hour spent with Mr. Schott on his chicken ranch would be hugely enjoyed by anybody in Yakima; and if the visitor happens along while the gentleman is diagnosing the case of a feeble chick, the amusement will be intensified. He said he had one case of heart failure Sunday, another of rheumatism on Monday, and has seen symptoms of appendicitis frequently.