118 THE CALL OF THE HEN. 



CHAPTER XVI. 



STAMINA IN POULTRY. 



When I came to California and told the poultry-raisers 

 that I was going to take their birds and in the course of time 

 breed a flock of 200-egg hens from them, they declared it 

 could not be done. They said if it was possible to breed up a 

 large flock of 200-egg hens, their progeny would be so weak I 

 could never raise them, and that their eggs would be so mis- 

 shapen and thin-shelled they would not be marketable. I re- 

 plied that perhaps they were right, but I saw no reason why 

 I could not do so here, as I had bred up one lot in the Eastern 

 States and another lot in Minnesota. Both lots were Leg- 

 horns, and I thought it would be easier to develop Leghorns 

 in California than in Minnesota, and I have now demon- 

 strated in California that the following can be done: 



1. The 200-egg hen is a fact and not a theory; 



2. That she can be bred and fed to lay as perfect 



an egg as any other class of hens; 



3. That her eggs are as fertile and will hatch as 



strong chicks as the hen that does not pay 



for her feed. 



The breeder need not take my word for the above state- 

 ments. The frontispiece shows five of this type of birds that 

 the writer bred and raised in California. These birds laid the 

 greatest weight of eggs (131 pens of five birds to each pen 

 competing, including three pens of Indian Runner ducks) in 

 the National Egg-laying Contest at the State Poultry Ex- 

 periment Station, Mountain Grove, Missouri, U. S. A., for 

 the twelve months ending November 1, 1912. These five 

 hens laid 131 pounds of eggs, which, reduced to No. 1 eggs as 

 rated in Petaluma, would be 229 3 /e eggs for each hen. The 

 eggs these five hens laid while moulting were put on exhibition 

 in the Chamber of Commerce in Petaluma and were pro- 

 nounced by good judges to be as fine a lot of eggs as they ever 

 saw, and that is saying a great deal, as there are more eggs 

 produced within a radius of ten miles from Petaluma than 



