Black Orpington Cock 



The egg-laying hen is an artificial product. She has been educated out of 

 her maternal instincts, and instead of laying a clutch of eggs and then brooding 

 them, she goes on laying from one hundred to two hundred eggs per year. She 

 lays eggs as a business. We have made her an egg machine. 



But she will do her best for us only under the best conditions, and these 

 must respect her wild origin and the necessity of keeping in her the old wild 

 vigor and abounding health of the fowl of the jungle. 



This is a chief difficulty, to keep a flock of hens under confinement, and yet 

 maintain in them vigorous health; to so feed them in pens as to approximate 

 natural habits, and have them housed so as to insure fresh air, the maximum of 

 sunshine, and have them clean, free of vermin, active, pre-occupied, contented, 

 busy and singing to care for them and be necessarily about them, yet respect 

 their privacy their disposition to lay in secret. These are the supreme diffi- 

 culties, yet it is from a clear apprehension of conditions growing out of the hen's 

 inherited traits that the egg basket must get filled. 



Missing the Point 



The beginner is apt to emphasize a single feature or two of the problem. 

 For example, the breed. As egg layers, some breeds are better than others, but, 

 save in a limited degree, success does not depend upon breeds. There are strains 

 of the best breeds, bred especially to lay, but, while more prolific than some other 

 strains, success does not turn about the best strains. 



Then we pin our faith to a method or system of feeding, and find in turn that 

 while some ways of feeding are better than others, giving better results, satisfac- 

 tion does not come from the best methods of feeding. 



So hi turn we try this system .or that of housing or of colonizing, only to dis- 

 cover that there is no one secret of success in this business. 



