No. 6. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 299 



Table VI. Table showiug the yearly record of hens arranged ac- 

 cording to the number of eggs that they laid continuously at any 

 time during the year. 



One of the theories that has been advanced in regard to the 

 methods of picking out high producers has been to find the birds 

 that lay most coniiuuously without a skip. We have picked out 

 15 birds from the Hock representing birds of continuous laying 

 qualities. These birds have been arranged in the order of the eggs 

 they laid during three years. (Table (Jj. The highest producing hen 

 laid 551 eggs and so on down to 103 eggs in three years, the lowest 

 producer in that lot. The various hens had the second of continuous 

 laying without missing a day as follows: 15, 5, and 6 days and so 

 on for the others. Here is a hen, 7880, that laid 28 days without 

 skipping a day, and laid 459 eggs in three years. Here is a hen that 

 had a record of never having laid over two days consecutively and 

 she gave us 05 eggs each year or a total of 103 in three years time. 

 We have a record of one hen that only laid 3 eggs in three years 

 time and did not lay these until toward the end of the third year. 



I see that my time is getting away and that Brother Wittman is 

 going to be crowded off the program if 1 do not hasten. In Fig. 17 

 is a picture of a hen that gave us our first clue in 1906 to the idea 

 that the way a hen moults in the fall is an indication of her laying 

 capacity. The late moulting of hens give us the second method of 

 picking our birds as high producers. Let us review the steps. The 

 first thing to do is select for vigor, the second is to pick out the 

 early laying pullets; the third is to watch these selected pullets 

 in the following fall of the year to find out whether or not they 

 moult late and lay late. Late moulting is an indication of late 

 laying. This bird (Fig. 17 j laid us 200 eggs between January 24 

 and October 12th, when this picture was taken. The next slide, Fig. 

 18, shows that same bird in full moulting condition. You will notice 

 that she has a perfect egg type, a body deep from the back to the keel, 

 deej) from the back to the abdomen, good, heavy shanks, set wide 

 apart; well developed head, large,* vigorous body. This slide 

 shows the hen taken the last of November when she had com- 

 pleted her record of 216 eggs for the year, and at that 

 time was the highest producing bird we had. This picture was taken 

 a few days after she was at her worst; she had begun to get her 

 new plumage but she gave the key to the whole situation as to 

 that factor as a means of indicating production. There is a picture 

 of Cornell Supreme (Fig. 19), the best hen we have ever dis- 

 covered. That picture was taken the 6th of December. We find that 

 every one of our phenomenally high producing hens those that lay 

 around 200 eggs or more a year, are birds that do not moult until 

 in November and December, and yet all these years we must confess 

 that until these facts were brought out, w^e have been inclined to 

 kill the hens that moulted late, just because they committed 

 the crime of laying too many eggs. We thought that if hens moulted 

 late, they would not lay early in the fall. The fact is that those 

 hens that moult late begin to lay more quickly, frequently, than 

 the poor producing hen that moult in July, August or September. 



