204 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



Professor Lewis has said that constitutional vigor means health, 

 activity, and vitality. A good hen is expected to lay in one year five 

 times her own weight in eggs and to consume thirty times her own 

 weight in feed. Without constitutional vigor this would be an im- 

 possibility. A hen at large will walk several miles in a day, hunt- 

 ing for food. If she has not the constitutional vigor to do this she 

 cannot stand the strain of such violent exercise and lay eggs as 

 well. 



Next to vigor, in importance, is environment, which has consider- 

 able influence. Environment, to be the best, must sustain and im- 

 prove life. Lack of room, air, cleanliness, and proper ventilation have 

 the same effect on poultry as filthy tenement houses have on people. 

 Fowls that are vigorous and active and that have a sound constitu- 

 tion are rarely, if ever, afflicted with disease. A fowl's physical 

 training, says Dr. Holmes, should begin with its grandparents. Scien- 

 tific investigators declare that they would not serve a fowl with a 

 crooked breast bone on their table, as this indicates lack of vitality, 

 and that they would not care to eat the meat of the fowl so weak 

 as not to have solid bone formation. 



In the breeding of livestock of all kinds there needs to be a great 

 deal more of consideration given to it than is usually agreed to. The 

 English people have shown themselves to be the most perfect or the 

 most expert in the breeding of livestock of the highest character. 

 One, quite successful with several kinds of livestock, has said tliat 

 there is no royal road to success. Said he, ''The only road to suc- 

 cess is a fixed resolve to continue irrespective of discouragement, un- 

 til you have succeeded in producing or in breeding a specimen or 

 specimens capable of winning continually in the keenest competi- 

 tion." 



To be able to do this one must have a natural inclination for the 

 work and must, first of all, understand the proper formation of the 

 animal to be produced — must know when it has the proper propor- 

 tions and how to produce them. 



It is rather peculiar, yet true, that the best of years ago of a cer- 

 tain kind of stock stamps its imprint on the product of the present. 

 For instance, the cow Lucky Farce, queen of Jerseys for her age, 

 owned at the Dalton Farm, traces fifty times to the great cow 

 Ooramassie and seventeen times to Eurotas, a noted dam and the 

 first cow to make a record of over 700 pounds of butter in a year. In 

 the same way the blood lines of a few individuals will be found 

 prominent in the greater part of all the heavy egg, producers of the 

 recent American egg-laying contest. For instance, all the males and 

 all the females in a flock of more than three hundred, trace back to 

 the original pen of four hens that won the gold medal in England in 

 1911. This would indicate close inbreeding, but this is not at all 

 necessary, because one hen, the heaviest egg producer of all, was 

 separated and males only from that hen were used. The following 

 year only males from one of the other hens were used, and each in- 

 stance only the heaviest egg producers were used for producing 

 the males, and each male and each female bred from had the strong- 

 est constitutional vigor. 



In a letter received last February from the owner of these flocks, 

 he wrote, "I wish T could send you two dozen males that we have 

 out in the brush. I must employ two boys to watch them all day 



