86 THE CALL OF THE HEN. 



The writer does not claim that he has discovered a system that will 

 infallibly give results just as he has written them. No poultryman needs 

 to be told this, but for the benefit of the amateurs I have inserted the 

 above caution. The writer claims, by years of investigation and prac- 

 tice, to have formulated a poultry code as contained in this book that is 

 commercially the approximation of perfection. 



We will return to our two-year-old hens. We said all one- and two- 

 finger-abdomen hens should be sold and we will consider them no more 

 than to put them in the market crates when we find one. The reader 

 will remember that in selecting the sixteen-months-old hens we retained 

 only those in the three-, four-, five-, and six-finger-abdomen columns 

 that measured 5 /ie, Vie, Vic, and "/IB of an inch or less, and everything 

 below these lines went to market. In the show room, when the writer 

 judges utility birds, we use the charts, so as to score each bird according 

 to its capacity for egg-production; but when we cull the poultry on 

 commercial plants, in order to save the time of looking on the charts, 

 we keep in mind only four figures for the hens of any age that we are 

 examining. For hens about sixteen months old, we use the figures: 

 5, 7, 9, and 11, which represent that many sixteenths; for hens with 

 three-finger abdomens, we use the figures 5 /ie; for four-finger abdomen 

 hens, 7 /i 6 ; for five-finger-abdomen hens, 9 /i 6 ; and for six-finger-abdomen 

 hens, I1 /i6- All under three-finger abdomen go to the market and all 

 under the line go also. 



For the two-year-and-four-months-old hens we keep in mind the 

 following figures: 3, 5, 7, and 9 sixteenths. For the three-finger-ab- 

 domen hen, 3 /ie-inch pelvic bone; four-finger-abdomen hen, 6 /i 6 -inch 

 pelvic bone; five-finger-abdomen hen, 7 /i 6 -inch pelvic bone. Everything 

 below these figures goes to the market; also all one- and two-finger- 

 abdomen birds there may be in the lot. 



We now go to the hens that are three years and four months old. 

 Any one- and two-finger-abdomen birds that we may find go to market 

 and all the three-finger-abdomen birds below Vie-inch pelvic bones. For 

 the three-years-and-four-months-old birds we bear in mind 1, 3, 5, and 7 

 sixteenths. Three-finger-abdomen hen, Yie-inch pelvic bones; four- 

 finger-abdomen hen, 3 /i6-inch pelvic bones; five-finger-abdomen hen, 

 6 /ie-inch pelvic bones; and six-finger-abdomen hen, 7 /i6-mch pelvic bones. 

 All below these lines go to market. 



If the reader has some good hens that he wishes to breed from, he 

 can use the figures: 1, 3, and 5 sixteenths. 



The fourth year, when he wishes to select from the four-, five- 

 and six-finger abdomen hens, it will be: Four-finger-abdomen hen, l / u - 

 inch pelvic bones; five-finger-abdomen hen, 3 /i 6 -inch pelvic bones; and 

 six-finger-abdomen hen, 6 /ie-inch pelvic bones. Very few will want to 

 keep hens as long as this. They will be five years and about four months 

 old when you will sell them. Most people here sell them about the 

 time they commence to moult after they are two years old; but I 

 selected the hens used at the California State Poultry Experiment Sta- 

 tion to test this method as far as the egg-laying qualities were concerned, 

 and the hens I selected as hens that would pay at four years made a 

 good paying record. 



The reader will understand that the way we have just been selecting 

 the paying hens is the way we select when we have large numbers; this 

 is the way I selected 1,600 hens in six hours at the poultry farm of the 



