THE CALL OF THE HEN. 75 
Ukiah State Hospital, Mendocino County, California, and at other 
State hospitals and poultry plants. We do not have to stop to figure 
out the percentage of loss of each bird. You can take any combination 
of figures you wish, as 44-inch, 3/s-inch, 14-inch, ®/s-inch, for sixteen- 
months-old birds; '/ie-inch,. ?/16-inch, °/15-inch, 7/1.-inch, for twenty- 
eight-months-old-birds. You can figure out the percentage of loss each 
year and take a combination of figures that will suit your purpose. You 
have only to carry four figures in your mind. The percentage of loss 
each year is computed by good poultrymen to be from 10 to 20 per 
cent in egg-production on plants that are run for hatching eggs. If you 
force your hens with an excess of meat and condiments, the loss will be 
according to how you feed them, and no one can tell what it may be 
but yourself. Some poultrymen will get practically all there is in a 
hen out of her the first season, then sell her. 
CHAPTER XI. 
Tue Mate Birp. 
This is not a treatise on cattle or horses, but we have to use them 
very, often to illustrate the matter in hand. Stock-raising has been 
brought to more of a science than poultry-raising, and is well understood 
by thousands of our progressive farmers. I have met hundreds of them 
who could describe to me the points I would have to consider in selecting 
a good-paying, butter-fat, beef or milk proposition, both in dam and 
sire; and while there may be as many poultrymen who understand the 
selection of poultry, both male and female, for egg- and meat-production, 
I have failed to meet them, and while I was made the butt of ridicule 
by the poultrymen when I issued my first pamphlet, entitled the ‘‘Walter 
Hogan System,” in March, 1905, the stock-raisers who were interested 
in poultry stood by me toa man. The reason was, that the cattlemen 
had been studying along the utility lines in both sire and dam in order 
to develop the milk, butter-fat, and beef-producing capacities of their 
cattle. It was a comparatively easy proposition for them. The form 
of the animals was plainly to be seen. They were not covered with a 
coat of fluff and feathers that hid the shape and form of the subject. 
It was easy to distinguish between the cat ham of the butter-fat type 
and the full, deep ham of the beef type. It was no trouble to compare 
the udders, milk-veins, and wedge-shape type of the Jersey with the 
full, rounded build of the Hereford or Polled Angus. ; 
On the other hand, the poultrymen, to some extent, were deceived 
by the appearance of their hens. Take, for instance, the Cochin and 
the Bantam; they would hold about the same relation to each other as 
the lordly Durham would to the fine-bred Devon, yet I have found 
Bantam hens with as deep abdomen as a great Cochin hen; and it is 
my opinion that if poultry were as bare of feathers as cattle are, the 
poultry industry would be as far advanced at present as is the cattle 
business. 
The greatest impediment to the successful breeder of poultry has 
been the inability to select the male bird of the required type. The 
custom.in vogue at the present writing with most poultrymen is to trap- 
nest their hens and raise cockerels from the best layers as indicated: by 
