CHAPTER VIII. 



The Trap Nest and Its Users. 



Within the past few years the outfit of the poultryman has 

 been enlarged by the addition of the trap nest. As to the 

 practical value of these nests there is a wide difference of 

 opinion ; on the one hand they are enthusiastically advocated ; 

 on the other they are scornfully condemned. The trap nest 

 needs a judicial appraisal. It has been unfortunate in both 

 its enemies and its friends. Many of those who have ridi- 

 culed it have never tried it, and those who have advocated 

 it have too often been those who are interested in it in a 

 financial way. 



The principle on which the invention rests is that of the 

 influence of heredity. It is a fact well known to all breeders 

 of animals that desirable traits may be transmitted, and by 

 careful mating a strain may be permanently established. It 

 is a matter of common knowledge that in the poultry world 

 some of the most popular breeds of to-day have been made 

 within a comparatively recent time by the combination of in- 

 dividuals of different varieties. It would seem almost axiom- 

 atic, therefore, that if one wishes to establish a heavy-laying 

 strain he must breed only from heavy layers. In the preced- 

 ing chapter I have told how these layers may be picked out. 

 But there is always the possibility that the poultryman may 

 be mistaken. The trap nest box may be used in the breeding 

 pen for a time at least to supplement the poultryman's per- 

 sonal observation. It is not necessary to use it all the year 

 round, or to use it in all the pens; but it may be used at 

 times in certain pens to good advantage to ascertain if all the 

 hens are laying, and to weed out hens that are not doing so 

 well as their owners think they ought, and hens that lay small, 

 misshapen or poorly-colored eggs. 



The fancier also may make good use of the trap nest in 

 the breeding season, to enable him to select the eggs of indi- 

 vidual layers. He may have in a pen a hen of unusual beauty 

 or excellence, the offspring of which he desires to keep for his 

 own use. The trap nest will enable him to pick out the eggs 

 this hen lays, and then by markings on the feet of chicks 

 hatched from these eggs it is easy to tell them from the rest. 



