106 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 Leghorns 

 and I thought it would be easier to develop Leghorns in Cali- 

 fornia than in Minnesota, and I have now demonstrated in Cali- 

 fornia that the following can be done : First, the 200 egg hen is 

 a fact and not a theory. Second, that she can be bred and fed 

 to lay as perfect an egg as any other class of hens. Third, 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 statements. The Frontispiece shows 

 five of this type of birds that the writer bred and raised in Cali- 

 fornia. These birds laid the greatest weight of eggs (131 pens 

 of five birds to each pen competing, including three pens of In- 

 dian runner ducks) in the National Egg Laying Contest at the 

 State poultry experiment station, Mountain Grove, Missouri, 

 U. S. A., for the 12 months ending November 1st, 1912. These 

 five hens laid 131 Ibs. of eggs which reduced to No. 1 eggs as 

 rated in Petaluma would be 229 3-5 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 in 

 any other like part of the world. We have hundreds of letters 

 from our customers testifying to the value of this stock, a few 

 extracts of which we will introduce here, to prove to the reader 

 that because a flock of hens are great layers it does not follow 

 that they are of low vitality. 



