FECUNDITY AND STAMINA 
Very High Egg Yields Do Not Seem to Result in Any Deterioration of Stock, and 
the Birds Produced in Such Strains Are up to the Average 
in Vigor—Selection Necessary! 
A. A. DUNNICLIFF, JR. 
New South Wales 
by more or less authoritative 
critics in various parts of the 
world that the striving for higher 
and higher egg production, and breeding 
from hens of great fecundity, can only 
result in degeneration of the constitu- 
tion of the stock and consequent dis- 
aster to the breeder. 
Egg-laying competitions have been 
pointed to as exercising a dangerous 
influence in this direction by fostering 
and stimulating the breeder’s efforts 
to ‘‘climb the ever-climbing wave”’ of 
high records, at the expense of the 
vitality of the layers and the stamina of 
their progeny. Now, in New South 
Wales, where this work has been in 
continuous progress longer than in any 
other part of the world, we know that 
the attainment of high records has 
never been subordinated by the con- 
trolling committees to practical and 
utilitarian considerations, as the re- 
strictions as to quality, size of eggs, and 
weight of the pullets testify. The great 
records obtained in these competitions 
have been produced on the plain ration 
of the ordinary poultry-farmer, with- 
out any forcing foods or adventitious 
aids, consequently there is nothing in 
them that is fictitious or beyond the 
scope of the commercial poultry-keeper. 
They, therefore, offer a sound basis for 
the consideration of the question at 
issue. The second and third year tests 
have provided unique opportunities for 
observation as to the relation between 
fecundity and stamina. Further, the 
‘[ danger signal has been raised 
following up of breeders’ results from 
competition hens of great prolificness 
furnishes facts which dissipate theories 
as to the inroads which heavy laying 
makes upon the constitution of the hen 
and her power to transmit stamina to 
her progeny. 
RECORDS OF CHAMPIONS 
It is instructive to trace the results 
of breeding from hens that have put 
up high records in these competitions. 
Take the pen of White Leghorns 
which won the second two-years’ test 
with 1,474 eggs in the first year and 
1,150 eggs in the second year, and that 
which won the fourth two-years’ test 
with 1,324 eggs in the first year, and 
1,045 in the second year. Both be- 
longed to the same owner and were 
bred on the same lines. These hens, 
I am assured by the purchaser of them, 
proved entirely satisfactory as breeders, 
both as regards fertility and the con- 
stitutional vigor of the progeny. The 
stock I have seen from these hens fully 
bears this out. Mated to cockerels 
of a strain with many years’ conspicuous 
competition performances, the tendency 
to weakness which has been pointed to as 
a concomitant of high fecundity could 
be looked for in both lines of blood did 
it exist. On the contrary, even in the 
fourth and fifth generations the result- 
ant stock shows a high average robust- 
ness that leaves nothing to be desired, 
a fact that is emphasised by pens of the 
direct progeny in the fourteenth and 
current (fifteenth) competitions. 
1 This paper was awarded first prize by the committee of management in connection with 
the eighth annual conference of poultry farmers, held at the Hawkesbury (N.S. W.) Agricultural 
College on June 17, 1916. 
It is here reprinted from the A gricultural Gazette of New South Wales, 
July 3, 1916, Vol. X XVII, part 7, pp. 507-510. 
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