28 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [P. D. 4. 



does not need to observe them any more; that will be some- 

 where around the 1st of January or the 1st of February, 

 depending upon how early they were hatched. Any time a 

 person goes into that pen and sees these birds running around 

 he can see instantly what class they fall into by the color of 

 the leg band, but he does not want to stop with that test, as 

 you have seen from the statement and records given you, and 

 I will show you why in a few minutes. Now, suppose he does 

 that and he finds that 4 of them get blue, 71 get red, 50 

 get green, 22 get yellow and 19 get no bands at all, or per- 

 haps black might be a good color for them, because that 

 stands for mourning, meaning they have got to die, — prac- 

 tically no good. Suppose now we wait until the fall of the 

 year, and if the pullets cease to lay by September 1 the chances 

 are that they are not very good. Birds that began prema- 

 turely early to lay, and who ceased to lay a little before the 

 1st of September, get a yellow leg band on the right shank — 

 a yellow leg band — because they ceased to lay before Sep- 

 tember 1. In the fall of the year we reverse the process, and 

 the quality always goes with the length of the laying period, 

 so that we begin by using the yellow band for those that 

 ceased before September 1, the green band for those that 

 ceased before October, the red before November and the blue 

 before December. Then we have the birds with the leg bands 

 on the right shank and the left, or with the left only and not 

 the right, and it may be of one color or the other. So we can 

 tell as the birds run around, after spring and fall testing, in 

 which group they belong; and here you can see what the dif- 

 ference in the value of these birds is. Of the 71 birds 22 

 of them ceased before September 1, 18 between September and 

 October, 22 between October and November and 9 after the 

 1st of November, making the 71. The birds with the blue 

 leg band average 230, 195, 161, 171 eggs, even though they 

 have been rather late layers, sometimes showing that the 

 lateness which hens continue to lay is a more valuable indica- 

 tion of their productive power, even, than the earliness that 

 they lay as pullets; and not only is this shown in the number 

 of eggs that they lay, but also in the dollars' worth of eggs 

 they lay, figuring up the egg values at the prices which are 



