FARM ANIMALS 313 



give satisfactory results. In order to prevent 

 accidents which are likely to happen during the 

 first few operations it is excellent practice to operate 

 first on a number of dead cockerels which have been 

 killed for home use. 



Age as Related to the Number of Eggs. The 

 universal experience of poultry raisers is that pullets 

 during their first season lay more than during the 

 second and the number of eggs rapidly falls off if 

 they are kept longer. Thus in Utah a careful 

 record was kept in which it appeared that forty-one 

 fowls laid during a given period nine hundred and 

 ten eggs as pullets and during the same season the 

 next year only four hundred and thirty-seven eggs. 

 It is a striking fact that pullets not only lay more 

 eggs than two-year-olds or aged hens but they lay a 

 much larger proportion of them in winter when 

 the demand for eggs is greatest and the prices 

 correspondingly high. 



On the basis of uniform experience that pullets 

 yield more eggs than old hens it is often recom- 

 mended that they be killed at the end of the first 

 laying season. This is good practice in some 

 respects but occasionally it is observed that the 

 fertility of the eggs obtained during the second 

 season is greater than in those from pullets and for 

 this reason some of the best layers may well be 

 kept a second season in order to obtain eggs for 

 hatching purposes. 



Age and Gain. It has already been stated that 

 young fowls gain faster than older ones and that the 

 economy of feeding is much greater. In one com- 

 parative test extending over a period of twenty-one 

 days fowls which were three hundred days old at 

 the beginning of the test gained only one-half as 

 much as chickens which were ninety-five days old 



