WHERE TO KEEP FOWLS 77 



year to pay for their food. The good layers are 

 undervalued, while the poor layers are given unde- 

 served credit. They may lay fairly well in the spring, 

 yet do little or nothing the rest of the year. By the 

 use of trap nests we learn the egg value of each hen in 

 the flock and are enabled to handle the layers fre- 

 quently, thus taming them and keeping constantly 

 informed as to their individual condition and require- 

 ments. The individual nest system has gradually 

 developed until now its adoption presents a practical 

 business proposition to the market poultryman and the 

 farmer, as well as to the fancier and pedigree breeder. 

 The practical, simple, inexpensive yet scientific trap 

 nest enables every poultry keeper to adopt the individ- 

 ual system. 



The trap nest is valuable to fanciers who wish to 

 follow line breeding or those who have a limited num- 

 ber of choice fowls from which they wish to establish a 

 pedigree strain. It is the favorite device of the man 

 who has a desire to bring up a strain of phenomenal 

 layers, and also useful to experimenters who need to 

 determine the results of certain crossings or matings. 



Although it is possible by the use of trap nests to 

 determine the number of eggs laid by individual hens,. 

 the impracticability of their use on a large scale is evi- 

 dent, since the expense of attending them overbalances,, 

 in a business sense, the results obtained. It is neces- 

 sary to look at the nests during the busy laying season 

 at least five times per day, and if a hen has laid each 

 time it takes considerably more than the "one minute a 

 day" claimed by more than one of the inventors ta 

 release the hen and credit the tgg to her account. In 

 looking after twenty pens of about five hens each it 

 takes on the average fifteen minutes each time, or one 

 and one-quarter hours per day. A person keeping 500 



