No. 4.] EGG PRODUCTION. 73 



breed reasonably true. Then, instead of having a lot of 

 chickens of all kinds and sizes, big and little, broad and 

 narrow, lean and plump, yellow skin and pale skin, smooth 

 shanks and feathers, rose comb and single comb and topknot 

 and all sorts of combinations mixed up, ringed, streaked, 

 spotted and striped, for market you have a poultry product 

 that is uniform. With all those mixed colors, types and 

 sizes precisely the same marketing situation develops that 

 would exist if you should send out your apples mixed up, — 

 sour and sweet, yellow and red, spotted and striped, big and 

 little, long-stemmed and short-stemmed, and all the other 

 combinations mixed up in one barrel. They would be called 

 cider apples. What are you going to call eggs that show 

 three or four ditferent qualities in one basket? I know 

 what people think; the minute they look at those eggs their 

 first impression is unfavorable. They think that " eggs is 

 eggs." Whenever you cast doubt upon the character of an 

 egg it is all off with the egg. They simply say that these 

 eggs are from no place in particular but from everywhere in 

 general ; that because they are of so many different kinds 

 they must have come from this man and from that man, 

 and have been gathered from everywhere in the neighbor- 

 hood. But if they are all brown or all white or all cream 

 colored, or whatever the tint may be, but uniform, they 

 look good, and people want them and they will pay the price 

 for them. That is one of the things you get from pure 

 breeding. 



And yet, friends, lest I be misunderstood, I want to say 

 right now that we might better have the veriest flock of 

 mongrels of all kinds and descriptions that have good health 

 and ability to eat, than to have the finest strain of pure- 

 breeds in existence if they lack stamina, as many varieties do. 

 It is worth while to take the best of the pure-breeds we now 

 have and make them conform to our standards of vigor, 

 health and productiveness. Then we have the ideal condition. 



How are we going to get hens that lay more eggs, espe- 

 cially when eggs are high priced ? Affairs sometimes work 

 out for our good when we least expect it. We can count as 

 a great advantage the fact that when we find hens that will 



