240 MAINE AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION. 1908. 



instance the methods which have been devised and put into 

 practice are known or believed to be different in some particu- 

 lars from those which have been used by other workers along 

 similar lines. Since these methods have proved to be useful in 

 actual practice it seems desirable to publish them for the benefit 

 of other breeders who may be interested in keeping exact pedi- 

 grees of poultry either for scientific or for practical purposes. 



In order that a concrete idea may be gained of the nature of 

 the technical problems which present themselves in pedigree 

 breeding work with poultry, it may be well to trace the opera- 

 tions which demand attention in the production of a chicken of 

 known ancestry. In the first place there must be a record on 

 each egg of the hen which laid that egg. This record coupled 

 with a knowledge of the male bird kept in the breeding pen 

 with the hen which laid the egg in question gives the first step 

 in the knowledge of the ancestry of the chick. But in order to 

 get an exact record of the hen which lays a particular egg it is 

 necessary to resort to the use of trap nests. The first technical 

 problem which presents itself in pedigree poultry breeding is 

 then to get a trap nest which shall be as nearly as possible ideal. 



Having made a record of the egg the next problem is that of 

 properly storing the eggs laid by the different hens until such 

 time as a sufficient number shall have accumulated to fill an 

 incubator.* It is obvious that under usual conditions enough 

 eggs will not be laid in the same day to warrant starting their 

 incubation at once. The eggs must be stored to make econom- 

 ical incubation possible. Furthermore it is not only highly 

 desirable but almost absolutely necessary that the eggs originat- 

 ing from different mothers should be kept separate from the 

 time they are laid so that at any time all the eggs which have 

 come from a given mother since the last date of incubation may 

 be found together. In order to attain this end various forms 

 of egg sorting devices have been made. One of the best of 

 these devices is an egg distributing table recently described by 

 Rice and Lawry.** This egg distributing table, planned by 



* It is assumed throughout this bulletin that incubators are used to hatch the chicks. 

 This is not the proper place to enter upon a discussion of the relative merits of natural 

 and artificial incubation. It need only be said that as a matter of fact few who have 

 tried artificial incubation attempt to do any pedigree poultry breeding work on an ex- 

 tensive scale using hens as incubators. 



** Cornell Experiment Station, Bulletin No. 248, pp. 219 and 220. 



