Part II.] FOWLS FOR EGG PRODUCTION. 13 



they have occurred and what caused them we will be able to 

 have an insight into the meaning of the thing so that we can 

 read on the outside of the bird what is going to take place on 

 the inside of the bird. 



This means that to-day we have a means of improving the 

 quality of our poultry that has never been known before in the 

 ages, and is making it possible for us to now breed our birds as 

 intelligently and as scientifically, nearly, as the man can who 

 has larger kinds of live stock. The great difficulty that the 

 poultryman has had to confront in all these ages, and the thing 

 that has held back the advancement of poultry breeding 

 throughout the country more than any other one thing or all 

 others put together, has been the fact that it has been necessary 

 for us to breed our fowls with regard to their production by 

 flock methods and by flock averages rather than by individual 

 merit. What I mean by that is this, that when a man has $100 

 invested in hens he has about 100 hens; when he has $100 in- 

 vested in cows he has only one or two individuals; he can mark 

 and he can know the parentage and the offspring of his cattle, 

 of his sheep, of his horses and of his hogs, but not of his hens. 

 He has known a certain male with a flock, and he has only 

 known that the chickens came from any one of 15 or 20 fe- 

 males, because he has not been able to connect the responsi- 

 bility for high production or low production with both parents 

 or either parent, and as a result the continuous breeding some- 

 times of a low line with a high line has held us to averages, and 

 it has only been a gradual and very slow process upward. But 

 with this discovery of certain externals which give us an idea 

 of what is happening inside, we are able to winnow out the 

 good birds from the bad. We can do this without the laborious 

 expense of a daily trap nesting, which has been practically pro- 

 hibitive because of the fact that it costs in the neighborhood 

 of 50 to 75 cents a year per hen, and it is only here and there 

 that a person has been venturesome enough to undertake the 

 expense and to keep it up. With this method that I am going 

 to try and make clear to you, we only need the trap nest dur- 

 ing the months of September, October, November and Decem- 

 ber, if we have hatched at the proper time; and as a matter of 

 fact, for the use of many farmers and poultrymen it is not 



