iNo. 6. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 295 



There in Fig. 14 is a study that gives us the actual daily egg 

 production of each one of those bird that we saw represented in the 

 previous illustrations. The first year's production of every oue of 

 those birds is shown in colors. Let us understand what this key 

 represents. The first year's production for each month, beginning 

 with November first until the following November, each block repre- 

 sents the days a fowl lays; a vacant space represents the time she did 

 not lay. We have arranged these birds into three groups; the 

 upper group was hatched May 2nd; the middle were hatched May 

 2Uth; the lowest were hatched May 31st. Each group you see was 

 a difi'erent brood. Then each one of these groups are arranged 

 according to time each one of the pullets in the group to the left 

 began to lay. To the left are the leg band numbers of each fowl. 



When we started the records in November, four birds were lay- 

 ing. How many eggs they had laid before we caught them in the 

 trap-nest, 1 don't know, but 1 think you can get a pretty ac- 

 curate idea when you study these records of production below, 

 because you see these four had begun to lay when we started, this 

 one laid next day, this one next and this one three days later, 

 and so on until we find one hen that did not begin to lay until 

 way over here the last of April. Notice the second hatch. The first 

 hen began to lay a week after we started the records; the next one 

 a week later, the next two or three days later, and so on, until 

 the last one in that hatch began to lay the last of March. Then 

 here is the third hatch — the first one began to lay two weeks 

 after we started the record, and the last one began to lay 

 way over here the last of April, but notice the point that they 

 began, as a group, t« lay just about the same time as the 

 ditterence in the time •f their hatching, i. e. each of the groups 

 when we consider them in mass usually are two to three weeks late in 

 production. Now you will say, I would like to know what those 

 birds are going to do the following fall? If these birds, hatched a 

 little later in the spring, began to lay later in the fall they 

 must lay later the following fall. Let us see whether they did 

 or not. Follow these lines and you will find these birds that were 

 hatched first began to lay first, and were still laying the last 

 day, absolutely the last day of October of the following year. How 

 about the second hatch? Well there were three or four still laying 

 at the time the year closed. How about the last hatch? Just 

 about the same. In other words, here is what happens, as the 

 next picture will show. (Fig. 15). When the cold fall weather strikes 

 the hens they all respond in essentially the same way regardless of the 

 time they were hatched the previous spring. That is exactly what 

 these birds did, all stopped essentially at the same time, almost re- 

 gardless of what time they began to lay. They did lay a little more 

 heavily in the spring if they started a little later in the fall. You will 

 notice in the first group there are more vacant places, representing 

 the days the hens did not lay, scattered around in March, April 

 and May because they had laid so heavily in the early fall. The 

 later hatched pullets never caught up in their production. The second 

 year (Fig. 15) these birds that were hatched late did not get down to 

 business any earlier than the others. When you come to the third 

 year, you will find that they did not continue any later. The point 

 is that if birds are not hatched early enough to begin business early 



