94 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



every other day, you will see it took twelve days for the yolk 

 to get from the size of a small beau to a full-sized yolk ready 

 to be laid. That took twelve days iu this case. It takes 

 from twelve to fourteen days generally for a hen to manufac- 

 ture a yolk from the size of a small pea up to that of the 

 yolk ready to be laid, and it takes about eighteen hours from 

 then to make it up into the full egg with the white around it 

 and the shell put on. 



This picture (Fig. 22) shows a flock of Plymouth Rocks 

 put into a house as pullets when they began to lay, and a 

 board floor put on the earth so that they couldn't get to the 

 ground to get gravel or soil, but were fed on the regular ra- 

 tion, with just one exception, — that they received no bone 

 nor any oyster shell. They had no lime other than what 

 was in the ordinary grain. They had mica spar cubical grit 

 which contained no lime and simply had the ordinary grind- 

 ing value. We noticed this, that the very first eggs these 

 hens began to lay were soft-shelled eggs, and the first egg that 

 they laid they ate, and they continued to eat every egg they 

 laid, if they could find them before we did, as long as they 

 were fed that kind of feed, and that was eleven months. We 

 lost 70 cents a year apiece on those hens. A very interesting 

 situation developed also. The hens were ravenously hungry 

 for food that tliov could not find. Their instinct told them 

 the things that they liked in the food and needed in order to 

 lay. If a hen happened to lay an egg all of the other hens 

 would immediately pounce upon it. They were so hungry 

 for those eggs that the only eggs we could get we induced 

 them to lay in a little box with a hole in it, with a glass egg 

 fastened so that they thought everything was all right, and I 

 have seen the hens up on one of the nests waiting for an- 

 other to lay so that they could get the egg before it got down 

 out of their reach. One laid an egg that got away from her 

 and she went head first into the hole, but it got away. She 

 was so mad that she was red in the face. 



We took six of those hens, — we killed part of them to 

 see what was inside, — and we put the six into another pen 

 and gave them all the oyster shell they wanted to eat, but 

 fed them on the same kind of ration otherwise. They im- 



