74 THE CALL OF THE HEN. 
The writer does not claim that he has discovered'a system that will 
infallibly give results just as he has written them. No poultryman needs 
to be told this, but for the benefit of the amateurs I have inserted the 
above caution. The writer claims, by years of investigation and prac- 
tice, to have formulated a poultry code as contained in this book that is 
commercially the approximation of perfection. A eee 
We will return to our two-year-old hens. We said all one- and two- 
finger-abdomen hens should be sold and we will consider them no more 
than to put them in the market crates when we find one. The reader 
will remember that in selecting the sixteen-months-old hens we retained 
only those in the three-, four-, five-, and six-finger-abdomen columns 
that measured °/16, 7/16, 9/16, and "/1. of an inch or less, and everything 
below these lines went to market. In the show room, when the writer 
judges utility birds, we use the charts, so as to score each bird according 
to its capacity for egg-production; but when we cull the poultry on 
commercial plants, in order to save the time of looking on the charts, 
we keep in mind only four figures for the hens of any age that we are 
examining. For hens about sixteen months old, we use the figures; 
5, 7, 9, and 11, which represent that many sixteenths; for hens with 
three-finger abdomens, we use the figures °/i.; for four-finger abdomen 
hens, 7/16; for five-finger-abdomen hens, °/1.; and for six-finger-abdomen 
hens, "/,g. All under three finger abdomen go to the market and all 
under the line go also. ; 
For the two-year-and-four-months-old hens we keep in mind the 
following figures: 3, 5, 7, and 9 sixteenths. For the three-finger-ab- 
domen hen, ?/1.-inch pelvic bone; four-finger-abdomen hen, °/1¢6-inch 
pelvic bone; five-finger-abdomen hen, 7/1.-inch pelvic bone. . Everything 
below these figures goes to the market; also all one- and two-finger- 
abdomen birds there may be in the lot. 
We now go to the hens that are three years and four months old. 
Any one- and two-finger-abdomen birds that we may find goto market 
and all the three-finger-abdomen birds below !/1.-inch pelvic bones. For 
the three-years-and-four-months-old birds we bear in mind 1, 3, 5, and 7 
sixteenths. Three-finger-abdomen hen, !/1s-inch pelvic bones; four- 
finger-abdomen hen, °/js-inch pelvic bones; five-finger-abdomen hen, 
5/y-inch pelvic bones; and six-finger-abdomen hen, 7/1.-inch pelvic bones. 
All below these lines go to market. 
If the reader has some good hens that he wishes to breed from, he 
can use the figures: 1, 3, and 5 sixteenths. 
The fourth year, when he wishes to select from the four-, five- 
and six-finger abdomen hens, it will be: Four-finger-abdomen hen, !/16- 
inch pelvic bones; five-finger-abdomen hen, 3/is-inch pelvic bones; and 
six-finger-abdomen hen, 5/1.-inch pelvic bones. Very few will want to 
keep hens as long as this. They will be five years and about four months 
old when you will sell them. Most people here sell them about the 
time they commence to moult—after they are two years old; but I 
selected the hens used at the California State Poultry Experiment Sta- 
tion to test this method as far as the egg-laying qualities were concerned, 
and the hens I selected as hens that would pay at four years made a 
good paying record. 
The reader will understand that the way we have just been selecting 
the paying hens is the way we select when we have large numbers; this 
is the way I selected 1,600 hens in six hours at the poultry farm of the 
