FARM ANIMALS 315 



once they may be fattened and the full market- 

 price obtained for them. He is thus saved the 

 expense of wasting food on non-laying hens in the 

 attempt to produce eggs from them. Not all of 

 the schemes which have been devised to separate 

 layers from non-layers are successful. Thus, in 

 Utah the matter was tested by keeping a careful 

 record of the egg yields of a number of hens of 

 apparently different types, submitting the photo- 

 graphs of these hens to various individuals who 

 posed as being able to differentiate between layers 

 and non-layers. In this test the characters which 

 were relied upon by the different experts failed 

 entirely. The grouping of the different hens, as 

 made by the different experts was entirely different, 

 so that their classification appeared to be little 

 more than guess work. 



Coops vs. Yard Fattening. Much difference of 

 opinion prevails regarding the merits of close 

 confinement and freedom in fattening fowls. In 

 the majority of tests which have been carried out 

 to answer this question the birds with a liberal 

 run have given better results than those in coops, 

 and the economy of meat production has been 

 greater. This matter has been thoroughly tested 

 by poultry raisers at home and abroad. English 

 and French poultrymen who make a specialty of 

 fattening poultry for market use small coops 

 holding only five or six fowls and claim decided 

 advantages for this method. In Canada coop 

 feeding has been used quite widely with more or 

 less satisfactory results. This problem has been 

 studied in Maine with the result that the gains 

 produced from fowls in small coops were equal 

 to those claimed by French experts in eleven coops 

 containing four birds each, while in twenty-four 



