no 



THE LEGHORNS 



selected from a laying strain, shell out twelve dozen 

 eggs a year, a good profit will be assured to the keeper, 

 provided he can keep his expenses within reasonable 

 bounds and retain the trade that demands and pays for 

 the highest grade eggs. As it costs from $1.00 to $1.50 

 per capita to feed Leghorns one year, the cost of each 

 egg produced would be a little less than one cent for 

 the feed alone. To this must be added the cost of th^ 

 labor, interest on investment and shipping and marketing 

 expenses, which vary considerably in different localities 

 and according to the size of the poultry farm. 



200 Egg Layers 



The "200 egg hen" has been exploited in print so fre- 

 quently and persistently that the impression has been 

 created that large flocks of White Leghorns exist in 

 which the yearly average of the hens is 200 eggs per 

 capita. That individual Leghorn hens have laid 200 eggs 

 in one year is true, and some specimens have even done 

 much better than that, but these are the exceptions, not 

 the rule. That at some future time flocks of Leghorns 

 will be bred to lay 200 eggs per hen annually seems 

 reasonable to suppose, as by continued and careful selec- 

 tion of the best layers, the producing capacity of the 

 flock will be gradually increased to the limit consistent 

 with old Dame Nature's laws. 



Personally, we believe a safe and profitable limit to 

 be 150 eggs per annum, these eggs to be produced at a 

 season when eggs bring the highest prices. Hens can be 

 forced to reach this limit and have sufficient time left to 

 moult and repair the strain to the system caused by con- 

 tinuous heavy laying. 



Building Up a 200 Egg Strain 



What we, in our opinion, consider the first systematic 

 experiment to build up a strain of 260 egg layers, was 

 begun by Charles Adair at the Cyphers Incubator Com- 

 pany's Farm, Elma, New York, several years ago. Mr. 

 Adair, who has charge of the latter, is a most enthusiastic, 

 hard working and painstaking poultryman, one who has 

 the true Missourian creed of "I want to be shown." In 

 other words he takes nothing for granted, but wants 

 the facts to prove his case. 



A little over two years ago he purchased four hun- . 

 dred White Leghorn hens that had a pen average of lay- 

 ing 185 4-5 eggs per capita in one year. He has now 

 167 hens, two years old that by trap-nest method have 

 laid 200 eggs each or better. One hundred and four of 

 their daughters (yearlings now) in lOyi months averaged 

 180 eggs each. On December 1, 1911, Mr. Adair had 600 

 pullets bred from the "200-egg hens," besides a large num- 

 ber of cocks and cockerels of the same blood. The ex- 



periments will be continued on a large scale each year 

 and the matings will be confined to the same line of blood, 

 i. e., the males from the most prolific laying dams will be 

 mated to hens that have made records of 200 eggs or 

 over and to their pullets. 



The illustrations on this and pages 109, 111, 112, 

 are from photographs of the most prolific layers on the 

 farm. The laying record made by each is printed below. 

 The latter are remaikable in showing what can be accom- 

 plished by intelligent and scientific selection of hens that 

 have equalled or passed the 200 egg per year mark, in 

 having this egg laying trait perpetrated in their progeny. 



The building up of the great milk and butter strains 

 of Jersey and Holstein cattle was founded on the careful 

 selection of the cows that produced the largest milk and 

 butter records, and breeding them to their sires that de- 

 scended from dams of known or equal proficiency in this 

 respect. "Like begets like," an old and true saying, is 

 even more potent in the transmission of the practical pro- 

 ducing qualities of animals than it is in the breed charac- 

 teristics of type and color. 



But as far as poultry culture is concerned, this great 

 law has not received the attention or intelligent applica- 

 tion from poultry breeders which it deserves. 



No doubt it will take more time, patience and per- 

 severance to select the "hens that pay" than it does to 

 select the heavy milkers, but in the end it will prove the 

 most profitable business a poultryman has ever under- 

 taken. 



The feed the "200 egg hen" consumes is not much 

 greater than that of the one that lays an even hundred or 

 less. 



Remove the drones and keep the busy bees — the 

 layers. 



Retail Prices of Eggs 



One of the shrewdest, oldest and most successful 

 poultry breeders in the United States, a man who has 

 made a fortune in breeding one variety of poultry, re- 

 cently remarked when questioned as to the poultry busi- 

 ness being overdone, "Why, it has not begun yet." 



And in no other branch of the poultry industry is this 

 more observable, applicable than in the egg business. 

 The latter is still in its infancy. Fresh eggs at this writ- 

 ing (December, 1911) are at a premium. This is es- 

 pecially so with the higher grade of eggs as the following 

 prices marked by the leading retail grocers in New York 

 will show: 



Nevv' York, November 22, 1911. 

 Acker, Merrill & Condit 



Selected 40 cents 



Maplehurst Fresh 51 cents 



Germless White Leghorn 73 cents 



