112 POULTRY BREEDING AND MANAGEMENT 



showed in some cases, even in poor laying hens, the presence 

 of over 2,000 oocytes. 



So far as the number of eggs in the ovary is concerned, 

 hens are all "born" with the inherited tendency to lay. 

 The lowest number in any one hen, as reported in Maine 

 Bulletin 205, was 914; the greatest number 3,605. By 

 using a low-power dissecting lens to aid the eye, the enor- 

 mous number of 13,476 oocytes were counted in one hen's 

 ovary. 



It should be understood that the ovary of the hen, even 

 before she lays any eggs, contains all the eggs, called 

 oocytes, that she will ever lay. More than that, she has 

 many times more eggs than she will ever lay. Why doesn 't 

 she lay them? That is the problem. Is it a lack of in- 

 herited ability to lay, or is it because of improper feeding 

 and care ? Is it the business of the poultryman to so mate 

 his fowls that the ability to lay the greatest possible number 

 of eggs will, in some manner, be transmitted from parent 

 to offspring? Or is it his business to so feed and house 

 the hen, in other words put her under such favorable en- 

 vironment, that she will empty her egg reservoir, so to 

 speak, during her natural laying life 



The poultryman who is gifted, however, with the faculty 

 of using common sense, will not neglect either the breeding, 

 the feeding or the care and expect to get the largest possible 

 egg yield. A knowledge of the fact that the hen has a po- 

 tential possibility of several thousand eggs, strongly empha- 

 sizes the importance of environmental factors, in other 

 words, good feeding, proper housing and care. 



Actual Limit of Production. Before the count of the 

 oocytes had been made the idea was somewhat prevalent 

 that 600 eggs was the limit of production of a hen. This 

 theory seems to have originated with a French writer named 

 Geyelin, who said: "It has been ascertained that the 



