310 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



chickens lay so few eggs, when you get him down in a corner 

 all by himself, why these chickens lay so few eggs, he will tell 

 you that the original mother hen laid that sort of an egg. 



Now we have a different kind of Leghorn in the last few years, 

 and I am sorry she is not the Pennsylvania Leghorn and not the 

 United States Leghorn either; she is an English Leghorn. Kow I 

 don't know why it is that the English Leghorns lay better than 

 the American, but I guess they do; it seems to me they do. Every 

 large commercial egg farm, if they don't have some English blood 

 already or don't have their large flock English, are thinking of doing 

 it, with one exception — I only know one large farm in Pennsylvania 

 that does not want English Leghorns. If there is any reason why 

 these English Leghorns lay better than our show type of American 

 Leghorn, it is because of something we heard so much about this 

 morning, vitality. I was in a large brood house in Pennsylvania 

 where there were 12,000 chickens, 2,000 English White Leghorns, 

 and I believe I would have undertaken the task of picking them 

 out nearly to the last one as two year old chickens already. You 

 can pick out the English White Leghorn. It never droops its 

 wings, it is a strong, vigorous chicken. These chickens were grown 

 on Pennsylvania soil; their parents w^ere English Leghorns; they 

 belong to a farm down in Lancaster county and were imported. 

 They are five chickens that came very close to winning the last 

 North American Egg Competition. They stood second. There were 

 50 or 60 of those chickens dowTi on that farm, and it would be very 

 difficult to get 100 chickens that yould each lay 200 eggs in some one 

 year. I believe you could pick out a lot down there that were 

 full sisters to those chickens. Every one laid considerably over 200 

 eggs. They are magnificent so far as vigor and vitality and ability 

 to lay eggs is concerned. I don't know whether you think this is 

 the prettiest, because I show^ed birds similar to the other five at the 

 Pittsburgh Poultry Show, the largest in Pennsylvania, this last 

 year. I mean the best attended. There was five of those birds 

 there. There was a long aisle of this kind; there was 10 people 

 looking at the other kind where there was one looking at this; in 

 fact this aisle having this sort of WTiite Leghorn, seemed to be de- 

 serted, but the aisle with the other five had a crowd, in fact finally 

 the Superintendent of the show insisted that they be moved because 

 they were blocking the aisle; and time and again people came to me 

 and said that of the two the other was the prettiest. Now this 

 is our idea, the chicken fancier's idea, of beauty, and we leave it to 

 the audience to say which is the prettiest, the workaday or the sliow 

 type of White Leghorn. There is a terrific difference between the 

 two; w'e have almost a different variety of chicken; you would 

 hardly think they were the same variety of chicken. 



Now, because the time is short, I am going to hurry on to the 

 next breed, the White Wyandotte. This is the show type of White 

 Wyandotte. These are Pennsylvania chickens; they are not the 

 present standards but will give you a pretty good idea of what 

 the breed of White Wyandottes are. That is the trouble, the slide 

 makers don't get all the details, because they don't know chickens; 

 they should have put deep yellow legs on there. But anyhow, that 

 is the show type of White Wyandottes. We want a very deep broad, 

 blocky bird. These chickens are almost as broad as they are long. 



