No. 6. 



DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



287 



around to see if anything is coming to get them ; every one of them is 

 on the lookout to ''get out of it." The strong birds are on tlie lookout 

 to "get into it;" that is just the diirorence between the two lots. The 

 high vitality want to get into the scrap, and the low vitality want to 

 get out of the scrap, and medium vitality are about halfway between. 

 Here are-the actual results of the mating observations. These lines 

 here shown in Fig. 9 represent efiQcieiicy in mating of the individuals 

 in all the dillerent times that they weie compared. Tlie largest lines 

 represent the number of matings of males of high, medium and low 

 vitality, so you will see how these different tests resulted. The figures 

 are the results of the 1st, 2nd and 3rd tests with the same individuals. 

 Here are the males of medium vitality, 1st, 2nd and 8rd tests. Here 

 are the birds of low vitality, 1st, 2nd and 3rd tests. When you come 

 to add all these three together in each of the three groups, we get 

 these lines at the lower part of the illustration nnd we find that dur- 

 ing those hours of observation on tliose particular days, there were 

 132 matings of these five individuals of high vitality, G4 of these of 

 medium vitality, and 39 of these of low vitality. The question for us 

 to settle is whether it pays to . pend a little time in daily observation 

 of the individual characteristics of our males before we undertake to 

 let the result of an entire seasons' hatching go by with infertile eggs 

 and inefficient matings just because we have not taken the time to find 

 out whether the males were strong or weak. 



Another factor of importance is to know how hens differ in fer- 

 tility and hatching power. 



A COMPARISON OF THE FERTILITY AND HATCHING POWER WITH 

 THE EGGS PRODUCED PER HEN. 



Eggs Laid in Two Tears of Production. 





•^ a 





175 or less, ... 



176-225 



226-275 



276-3S 



326-375 



376 and over, . 



Summary, 



69.0 

 56.7 

 63.2 

 66.0 

 68.6 

 42.2 



61.9 



Table I. The w^ay in which hens of widely different laying records 

 differ in fertility and hatching quality of theiir eggs. 



Table I shows the actual results of the carefully kept records 

 of a year with birds in the college flocks. Here we find, all told, 82 

 hens under consideration that laid 1,278 eggs that were carefully 

 tested. They averaged 93% fertile and Gl% of these hatched. These 

 hens are grouped into these different collections, those that laid in 

 two years' time 175 or less eggs — that is pretty low production ; 170 

 to 225, then 226 to 275. You see we increased about 50 eggs at a 

 time or 25 eggs per year per hen is the difference in the grades here 

 used. The number of hens in each one of these groups is shown and 



