THE CALL OF THE HEN. 17 



been bred for years for butter- fat, and practically everything 

 fed to them goes to milk and cream. If the reader's experi- 

 ence has been with horses, he is aware that a man engaged 

 in teaming would not select the trotting type of horse, neither 

 would a turfman put his money on an 1800-pound Clyde 

 horse, if the balance of the field were trotting horses; that 

 would not be horse sense. Now, the same comparison holds 

 good in the poultry field, except with this difference, that the 

 egg type and meat type in poultry have never been segregated 

 into different breeds, and each breed bred for a number of years 

 along the line it was intended for the egg type bred for 

 eggs alone, and all birds inclined to meat-production discarded 

 both male and female, and the meat type bred for meat, 

 without regard to eggs, except enough to perpetuate the 

 species, just as the typical butter cattle and typical beef 

 cattle have been bred. 



I have seen a great many cases like the first-mentioned 

 article, where a person would go into the poultry business 

 and get started with stock that was of the meat type, and, 

 not knowing any better, would think that all poultry was the 

 same as his, and the only way any money could be made in 

 the business was to sell fancy birds and eggs at fancy prices. 

 Now, these people are not to blame for what they do not 

 know. They think their hens are as good layers as any 

 other hens, and they have no way of knowing C'ny better. 



I have also seen a great many cases like Mrs. Basley 

 writes of, except the profits were not so large, owing to different 

 environment, I suppose. These people had the same breed 

 of hens as the parties before mentioned, but they were for- 

 tunate in getting the egg type, and they made money with 

 their hens. Everyone thinks every other person's hens are 

 the same as theirs, if they are of the same breed, and that 

 is the reason there are so many different conflicting state- 

 ments in the poultry papers, and not because the writers 

 are not intelligent or not truthful, as some suppose. From a 

 scientific point of view, and apart from the fancy, and as 

 far as the knowledge of meat and egg production is concerned, 

 the poultry business is in its infancy, and the people who 

 write for the poultry papers give their experience for your 

 benefit. That is all. 

 p H 2 



