BREEDING POULTRY FOR EGG PRODUCTION. I25 



tion. The reasons why this would seem to be the case are as 

 follows : The system of housing in the so-called "curtain 

 front" type of house which has been used at the Maine Sta- 

 tion practically from the beginning of these experiments has 

 been widely adopted by practical poultrymen all over this 

 country and indeed in all parts of the world. It was the first 

 attempt at the "fresh air" principle in housing poultry and has, 

 with some modifications in recent years, grown steadily in 

 favor in the minds of practical poultrymen who know that this 

 method of housing, so far from adversely affecting egg pro- 

 duction instead actually promotes a better egg production be- 

 cause it helps to keep the birds in a better general physiologi- 

 cal condition than in any type of house yet devised.* 



The same consideration applies with reference to the method 

 of feeding used throughout the selection experiment. The 

 Maine Experiment Station's dry mash has been very widely 

 used indeed as a laying feed. It is a feed calculated for, and 

 in actual practice shown to be excellently adapted to, stimulat- 

 ing the birds to something approaching the maximum of pro- 

 duction of which they individually are constitutionally or 

 hereditarily capable.* 



This brings us to a consideration of the third of the great 

 divisions of poultry management, namely, the hatching and 

 rearing of the chickens. Here there are two methods: (a) the 

 natural, in which the eggs are incubated by a brooding hen and 

 the chickens are reared by a hen; and (b) the artificial, in which 

 the eggs are incubated in incubators and the chickens are 

 reared in brooders. Each of these methods is widely practiced 

 and each has its staunch adherents. There is, however, a very 

 wide spread feeling amongst poultrymen that artificial hatching 

 and rearing has, in the long run, an injurious efiiect upon the 

 stock. This injurious efl^ect, they will grant, may not be ap- 

 parent at once. But if artificial methods are persisted in for a 

 long period of time those holding this view maintain that the 



* This statement is intended to include "fresh air" houses of the 

 Tobnan and other patterns in the same general category as the "curtain 

 front" house. 



* This, of course, does not mean that any of the records of egg pro- 

 duction ever obtained at the Maine Station approach the physiological 

 limits of fecundity of the domestic fowl as a class. Cf. on this point (9). 



