304 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



which the "Swat the rooster" campaign is promulgated through the 

 country gives the farmer the impression that he should kill every 

 rooster in sight. Now that is not right. I would rather have a 

 male that is two or three or four years old and equal in vitality as 

 he frequently is than I would a cockerel of the same variety; you 

 know just as well as 1 do, men who have had much experience in 

 selecting males, that you may pick five males out of a hundred and 

 breed them for one season and find that several of them have lost their 

 vitality and virilty. I know that you can in-breed and retain vitality 

 and you can in-breed for high vitality and increase it, but I believe that 

 the tendency of mating together close relationship is wrong and we 

 ought to get outside of our own lines occasionally, but I also want to 

 say that more people make the mistake of trying to get new blood into 

 their flocks every year just because of the supposed desirability of 

 new blood, than the people who stay pretty largely within their 

 own lines. We never can make permanent progress in improving 

 the quality of our eggs or the number of eggs laid if we are going 

 to get somebody else's males or females into our flock every year 

 or two. The chances are that we may reduce our vitality, we may 

 reduce our general quality — we may reduce both the number of eggs 

 and the quality of the eggs by so doing. What we want to do is to 

 find some person in our neighborhood who is doing the same kind 

 of breeding we are and then exchange the best birds with him. 

 Let him pick these from your flock and you pick the best from his. 



In Fig. 20 is seen how a 30 dozen case of eggs looks picked up in 

 the country at random and graded according to the three sizes, 

 three colors, as indicated in the previous slide, then figured up at 

 the following prices for each of those grades. That particular case 

 of eggs, under those circumstances, would have been worth $11.14 

 at the prices quoted for each grade separately and sold at the grade 

 price. If, however, that 30 dozen caso of eggs had all been of the 

 first grade, large and white, it would have sold for $15.60 instead of 

 fll.14. If, however, that whole case of eggs had been of this small, 

 mixed color eggs, it would have sold for $7.80, instead of $11.14. 

 When one can make a difference of 5 cents to 10 cents a dozen in 

 the price of the eggs and a hen lays 10 to 12 dozens eggs a year, 

 you can see for yourself that five times eleven is 55 cents, gross 

 income per hen due purely to the quality of the egg she lays. 



The figures show an important principle in selecting eggs for hatch- 

 ing; if we are going to get eggs that are of large size we must use 

 the same kind of an egg for hatching. If we expect to get birds 

 of good size, we must use large eggs for hatching, assuming that 

 we have the same breed under consideration. Here is the way it will 

 will work (Table 8.) Here are eggs that were selected as small eggs; 

 they weighed 1.66 ounces; here were eggs selected from the same flock 

 that weighed 1.90 ounces; here were large eggs that weighed 2.35 

 ounces; now then, at the end of the time when those chickens were 

 hatched, the eggs were in the proportion of 100 to 114 and 141. 

 Assuming the first ones as one hundred, then these were 114 and 

 these were 141 in size. This is at the time of hn telling. Now here 

 is the weight of the chickens when they were 20 weeks old; 1.87, 

 2.20, 2.65; and here is the proportion which you can compare with 

 that; 100, 122, 142. There are the actual weights of the egcs out 

 of which the chickens hatched. Here is the weidit of the chickens 



