Part II.] FO^M.S FOR EGG PRODUCTION. 27 



The first laying year for the first group comprised a 303 

 days' span between the first and last egg; the second group, 

 245 days'; the third group, 211; and the fourth group, 178. 

 Notice the difference in the length of the laying period. So 

 what would we have accomplished if we had, by this simple 

 method of leg banding, been able to discard 28 birds at the 

 end of the first year as birds that had an average production 

 of 90 eggs the first year, 107 the second, and 95 the third, — 

 an average of 97 eggs for the three years. 



These birds were all culls, every one of them. Every one 

 of them lost money for us if we kept them, and if we had 

 wanted to we could have thrown all those birds out at the 

 end of the first fall, or we could have kept them until early 

 spring, when they ceased laying, and let them go at that time. 

 We could have thrown away or could have sold as mere layers 

 both of these groups, and we would not have lost any of our 

 very high-producing birds, and we would have kept all, — 

 practically all, — of our high-producing birds. 



Now here comes the practical application of this thing to a 

 color system of leg banding. I want to explain it to you in 

 order that you may get the point clearly, and that is that we 

 have first of all a record of the age of a bird, and then we 

 have in the henhouse a statement when the birds in that 

 house are six months old, when they are seven months, eight 

 months, nine months old, and so on. It is a very easy matter 

 to figure out; you can do it in five minutes on the calendar. 

 Knowing the date they were hatched, have hung right over 

 each of those dates, nailed on, a certain leg band. Let each 

 leg band be of different color; ordinary celluloid bands are 

 used. Then mark those pullets as you see they are laying, 

 either by trap nests or by means of external characteristics 

 that you put on the shank of the bird. For the one that begins 

 to lay before she is six months of age a blue leg band on the 

 left shank; blue bands indicate best quality birds. Any bird 

 that lays between six and seven months, put a red band on the 

 same shank. Any bird that lays between seven and eight 

 months, put a green leg band on the left shank, and on those 

 that lay between eight and nine months put a yellow leg band 

 on the left shank. After they are nine months old a person 



