23 



flocks and as many ways, of course, by which we can right things and 

 increase the vitality in our flocks. Time will only permit of a very 

 few enumerations. Improper methods of feeding; feeding of un- 

 balanced rations, feeding of unwholesome food, all lead to trouble. 

 If hens are fed right there is no reason in the world why even with 

 the tremendous demand upon their system for egg production that 

 they should not continue reasonably strong and well. The best ration 

 need not be the most expensive one nor the one that will take the 

 most labor in feeding the hens. A ration which we are feeding at 

 Cornell is one that is exceedingly easy to make and to feed, and yet 

 the result is, as I have stated, that with the very high production of 

 certain flocks and individuals there was very low mortality. In one 



Figure 2. Four groups of males of high and low vitality. Note the similarity in 

 type of the males of low vitality in each of the groups. 



cross-breeding experiment, where we had twelve chickens in each of 

 the four flocks, we had in the fall of the year every hen that we 

 started with a year before, and in each one of these four flocks the 

 average number of chickens reared of those that were hatched (and a 

 considerable number were hatched from each of the four flocks), it 

 was better than ninety per cent, and the other two nearly ninety per 

 cent, and of all the twenty-two flocks on the place where we hatched 

 2,380 chickens we brought back in the fall of the year from the farm 

 or sold to market eighty-four chickens of every one hundred chickens 

 placed in the brooders. That covered all experimental work and in- 

 cluded a loss from accident of seventy-five chickens in one night. 

 You can readily see that if the ration is satisfactory and the hens and 

 the other conditions are good the hens will survive under the strains 

 of heavy production if they are properly bred instead of losing five 

 or ten individuals out of every hundred, which is a tremendous loss. 



