THE CARE OF POULTRY 29 



The food value of the white shelled eggs was 

 therefore slightly the greater. Taking all points into 

 consideration, there is nothing to choose between them 

 in physical or chemical properties. Yet who will make 

 the average householder believe it? The brown shell 

 is thought to be richer than the white shell ; it has 

 been held so for a number of years. They look prettier 

 on the breakfast table, and that always bears weight ; 

 but there is no ground for believing that the white are 

 less rich than the brown. The Boston market will pay 

 a premium for brown eggs ; New York for white ones. 



THE SEX OF EGGS 



The story is told of an English farmer who asked 

 his wife to pick out a sitting of eggs. She chose 

 medium size, good shaped eggs, but he rejected all, 

 saying: "Them's cockerels, Martha." Instead he 

 picked out all round eggs. They hatched eleven chicks 

 — all cockerels. 



Another English poultry keeper, who has been 

 working on this subject for several years, thinks he 

 has at last discovered a way to insure a large propor- 

 tion of either pullets or cockerels, as may be desired. 

 He has given up all idea of being able to determine 

 the sex by the shape of the egg, size of air cell, time 

 of day it was laid or any external characteristics. He 

 now thinks the sex of the egg is determined at the 

 time of sexual contact and that there are two elements 

 or forces which unite, a positive from the male and a 

 negative from the female. 



Where the predominating force is positive, a male 

 w^ill result, and vice versa. To test this he mated in 

 April a very vigorous cockerel with two hens which 

 had laid all winter, with the object of getting cockerels. 

 The hens had worked hard for some months and the 



