88 BOARD OP AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



February and ]\Iarcli, and so on, skipping only from three to 

 five days usually in a month, laying sometimes an egg a day 

 for five or six days without skipping. And in April, May, 

 June and July she laid as well as she did in any of the other 

 months. In August and September and October she kept up 

 the good work, and you can scarcely see any let-up in produc- 

 tion until JSTovember. Then, beginning on her second year, 

 you see she took five or six days' vacation in ISTovember, and 

 here, in December and January, did not lay an egg, but was 

 through molting and began laying the first day of February, 

 and got right down to business in good shape in March. 

 Now, following down through April, May, June, July, 

 August, September, October and November in her second 

 year, you see that she was doing approximately as well as 

 she did the first year, and took her vacation again in No- 

 vember at the end of the second year. When we see pro- 

 duction of that sort from a high-strung hen we realize her 

 dependence upon regularity of food supply of the right kind, 

 in order to produce an egg every day, or every other day, 

 right straight along, week after week. We realize that if 

 anything goes wrong that hen can't continue to manufacture 

 the product. We must all know the importance of feeding 

 good hens properly. 



The following circumstance is an indication of the im- 

 portance of selecting and keeping late-molting hens because 

 they are usually high producers. We had 100 hens to bo 

 discarded for lack of room; from these we selected two flocks 

 of 10 each on the basis of the 10 highest producers and the 

 10 lowest. The selection was made on the seventh day of 

 November, which is when hens are supposed to be through 

 molting. Here is the result: the ten highest averaged to lay 

 192 eggs in that year; the 10 lowest producers averaged to 

 lay 28 eggs in the same year. Now, notice the molting condi- 

 tion on the Yth of November. In each one of these cases 

 except three they were in heavy molt. That means that they 

 were pretty nearly molted out ; that is to say, the new feathers 

 hadn't come on and they were all ragged. Three of them 

 only were in what you could call advanced molt, — getting 

 ready to get their new feathers, — whereas over here, among 



