172 POULTRY BREEDING 
a yard with a White Leghorn cockerel, from which she 
was separated in the fall, laid eggs in February that 
were fertile and showed White Leghorn blood in the 
chicks hatched from the eggs. 
FLAVOR OF EGGS.—At the North Carolina station 
wild onion tops and bulbs were fed to hens, and the 
length of time before there was a change in the flavor of 
the eggs produced by these hens noted, as well as the 
time that must elapse after the onion feeding was dis- 
continued before the objectionable flavor would disap- 
pear. At the beginning of the trial '%4-ounce of chopped 
onion tops was fed daily to 12 hens of different breeds. 
Repeated tests did not show any onion flavor in the eggs 
until the 15th day, when it became distinctly noticeable. 
The quantity of onion tops was doubled and this fed for 
four days and then discontinued. The eggs laid while 
the larger quantity was being fed were so strongly flay- 
ored that they could not be used. After discontinuing 
the onion feeding the flavor became less noticeable and 
at the end of a week the eggs had returned to the normal 
flavor. 
The main point is that flavor may be fed into eggs. 
Not only the flavor of onions may be noted in eggs but 
the feed the hens consume may give the eggs they lav 
a musty flavor or a rank, disagreeable flavor that comes 
from the hens scratching grain out of a manure pile. 
Some years ago the New York station in studying the 
effect of nitrogenous vs. carbonaceous feeds for poultry 
reported observations on the effect of different kinds of 
feeds on the flavor of eggs. One lot of fowls was ‘fed a 
mixture of wheat shorts, cottonseed-meal and skimmilk ; 
another cracked corn and corn dough. The former ra- 
tion contained much more nitrogen than the latter. The 
