102 MAINE AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION". I9OO. 



every indication of capacity, but they were equaled in appear- 

 ance, in the minds of good judges, by other birds that yielded 

 a much less number of eggs. 



The size and uniformity of the eggs yielded are of a good 

 deal of importance. It was very noticeable in these investiga- 

 tions that the eggs from hens that laid the greatest numbers aver- 

 aged smaller in size than those from hens that did not produce 

 so many. That this is not always the case is shown by the eggs 

 from numbers 101 and 286 which were of good size and dark 

 brown, while those from number 36 were small and lacking in 

 color. For this defect number 36 has been excluded from the 

 breeding pens. 



Xumber 14 is a good, large, strong White Wyandotte and 

 because of the quantity and quality of her productions she is a 

 phenomenal bird. When she went into the test November 1st, 

 1898, she had been laying for over two weeks. At the end of 

 the year she had two hundred and eight good brown eggs to her 

 credit, and she still kept on, laying 18 eggs in November, 22 in 

 December. 21 in January, 18 in February, 15 in March and 18 

 in April (just closed) giving her 112 in the first six months of 

 her second )*ear, and 320 in eighteen months, a little more than 

 an egg in a day and three-fourths for the entire year and a half 

 after she commenced laying. 



When the eggs from the hens that had been laying long and 

 freely were placed in incubation, many of them were found low 

 in fertility, or entirely sterile, notwithstanding the hens had mated 

 freely with vigorous cockerels. The percentage of infertility 

 was much greater than in eggs from hens that had been laying 

 moderately. The question arises whether a large percentage of 

 the chickens raised each year are not the produce of the tardy 

 and moderate layers that are comparatively fresh, rather than 

 of the more valuable and persistent layers that have been hard 

 at work all winter? If this is so, breeding from eggs as they 

 are ordinarily collected, without a knowledge of the hens that 

 produce them, can but tend to furnish a large proportion of 

 chickens from the poorest hens in the flocks. The cockerels as 

 well as the pullets raised in this way furnish the breeding stock 

 for the next year and in this manner the reproduction of the 

 poorer rather than the better birds is fostered. 



