120 POULTRY FOR PROFIT 



everybody. On the big poultry farm it is a neces- 

 sity ; on the farm or back-lot it is usually a nuisance. 

 Some one must always be on hand to let out the 

 hens that are on the nests and to record their num- 

 bers, and this means closer confinement than the 

 women of the family are willing to submit to. 



Marks of the Layer 



1. The bred-to-lay hen is a vigorous hen. This 

 she must be, whatever else she is or is not. She bears 

 the marks of vigor which have been mentioned. Her 

 comb is red, her manner alert, her eye bright, her 

 appetite good. She scratches and sings from morn- 

 ing till night, and is never seen loafing in a corner or 

 on the roost. Very often she may be known by her 

 worn-off toe nails, the result of hard scratching. 



2. The bred-to-lay hen is almost always of the 

 laying type, long in the back, deep in the chest, wide 

 in the fluff, for how can a hen lay unless she has 

 room for her egg-laying organs? The body of the 

 layer should be long, broad, deep and V-shaped as 

 viewed from the side, the small part of the V lying 

 toward the front of the body. 



3. The bred-to-lay hen is the hen that commences 

 to lay early in the fall. It has been proven again 

 and again by trap-nest records that the heavy pro- 

 ducers almost invariably lay their first egg in No- 

 vember. The pullet that does not lay her first egg 

 till January need not, unless she was hatched very 

 late, be considered. 



4. The good layer is usually the hen with a comb 

 that is large for her breed. Just what the relation 

 is between laying powers and size of comb we do not 

 know, but there is some relation. Leghorn breed- 

 ers admit that a great mistake has been made in try- 

 ing to breed a small comb on the Leghorn hen. The 



