26 



Professor Lewis. We have there from virtually nothing up 

 to free range. If I were putting up this house such as I 

 described, I should want a yard for 100 hens at least 100 feet 

 wide and 20 feet long, and practice double yarding as I have 

 mentioned. Of course, I can grow other crops, like rape, which 

 makes a very luxuriant growth. We grow a lot of rape for 

 summer feeding to birds entirely confined. We have two flocks 

 of 100 birds each which have never been out of the house for 

 three years, and have made on an average $2.22 per bird. I 

 am not recommending that, but am giving you an instance of 

 the work we have been doing. 



Question. Is there any danger of the rape making the eggs 

 taste? 



Professor Lewis. I have never had it do it, fed in moderate 

 amounts, and we have fed birds right on it. I have heard of 

 instances, however, where people claimed it had. 



Mr. Parsons. Do I understand that you have tried keeping 

 hens confined for three years as against free range? 



Professor Lewis. Yes. The result of the free-range birds at 

 the present time is about $1.98 in profit per year. The mor- 

 tality has been nearly the same. The hatchability of the eggs, 

 of the confined birds has been very much below that of the 

 eggs of the birds in the free range. Personally, my own 

 opinion is this: birds which I was feeding for egg production 

 I would keep more or less confined, except possibly during the 

 summer when they were molting. My breeders I would let 

 run as much as they wanted to and not force them for egg 

 production, just previous to eggs for hatching. We have 

 studied six or seven hundred eggs this last winter, with reference 

 to their hatchability. We found that the dense albumen was 

 apparent in all those cases where the eggs hatched, and there 

 was 10 per cent less water than in the albumen of the eggs that 

 did not hatch. W-e believe that a lot of poor hatching is due 

 not to faulty incubation or faulty mating methods, but to the 

 innate tendency of the bird to produce a watery albumen. 

 There is not nutriment enough in that albumen to nourish the 

 chick through twenty-one days and get it out of the shell. We 

 are conducting some experiments on this line now, and expect 

 to continue them during the coming year. 



