FERTILITY AND HATCHING OF EGGS. lOQ 



In order to get at such facts in a practical way it is necessary 

 that the birds be kept in small flocks. Otherwise very few 

 males will be represented in the pedigrees. The only place in 

 which it was possible to make small pens to accommodate lo 

 to 15 birds each in the spring of 1908 was in the old, heated 

 house No. I. It had long been known that this house was not 

 at all suited to breeding work. In its past history it had made 

 a bad reputation for itself as a breeding house. The hatching 

 eggs obtained from it had never averaged nearly so high in 

 either fertility or in percentage of fertile eggs hatched as had 

 eggs produced in the curtain front houses Nos. 2 and 3. Fully 

 aware of this fact and of the low absolute averages which it 

 would mean in the work it was nevertheless necessary, for the 

 reason which has already been stated, to use this house in the 

 breeding work in 1908. This fact accounts for the low aver- 

 ages of fertility and hatching which are exhibited in the tables 

 for 1908 which follow. These averages are not to be taken as . 

 representative of what the Station's birds would do under more 

 favorable conditions. 



The bad effect of house No. i on the fertility and hatching 

 qualities of the eggs was very clearly shown even in the 1908 

 work itself since there were available for comparison the 

 records of two pens of 15 pullets each kept in house No. 2 in 

 curtain front pens. As will be shown farther on the records 

 for these two pens exhibit a much superior fertility and hatch- 

 ing quality of the eggs than do those of the pens in No. i house. 



Before the breeding season of 1909 the curtain front house 

 No. 2, was remodeled and fitted up particularly for use as a 

 breeding house. Each of the seven pens into which it was 

 originally divided was again divided into two by a semi-remov- 

 able partition. This gave 14 breeding pens 10' x 13', all of the 

 curtain front pattern. All of the breeding work in 1909 was 

 carried on in these pens. 



In the 1908 work 10 female and i male bird were put in each 

 of the small pens of house No. i. In 1909 15 female and i 

 male bird were put in each of the breeding pens of house No. 2 

 just described. This dift"erence in method, together with the 

 fact that in one year the breeding was done in a closed, heated 

 house, and in the other year in a curtain front house render 

 the statistics of one year not directly comparable with those 



