42 COMMON SENSE 
few eggs and chickens every year—the sales being expected to 
offset, to a slight extent, the money actually laid out for feed, etc. 
As already stated, I had only one rooster—the Brown Leghorn— 
and on taking stock I found that I had just 57 hens. After select- 
ing seven for breeding purposes this left exactly fifty for laying. 
Most of my neighbors would have had five or. six roosters with 
these hens—a useless expense, as I have found that hens lay quite 
as well when. alone as when with a rooster. 
‘By confining the attentiom of the rooster to seven hens, the bird 
was not exhausted and enfeebled, as he would have been if he had 
been put with the whole flock. ‘The eggs were therefore more 
likely to be impregnated, and the progeny more certain to he 
vigorous. I have found, by experiment, that a single attention 
from the cock is just as good as a dozen, and perhaps better, pro- 
vided he is in vigorous condition, Weak chickens do not come 
from’ the fact that the hens have not had attention enough, but 
from the fact that.owing to too many efforts in this direction: the 
vitality of the cock is lowered. Of course the influence of the 
cock disappears after a few days, and must be retiewed, but while 
it lasts there is no diminution of its potency. 
By selecting choice hens, and breeding only from them, I was 
enabled to control the kind of chickens I-should have, and by 
keeping them in a coop by themselves I lost no time selecting eggs 
and trying to find out which hens laid them. It may be possible 
for a poultry keeper with five or six hens to distinguish the eggs of 
each individual bird, but where there are thirty to fifty this becomes 
impossible. By keeping the breeding hens by themselves all trouble 
in selecting eggs is avoided. 
The result of the experiment-was all that I could desire. We set 
the hens of the main flock as fast as they became broody, and ina 
little while we had quite a number of young broods scattered over 
the place. Some of the breeding hens wanted to set; we gave 
them eggs and let them bring out their broods. Meanwhile, four 
more hens were selected from the main flock: and shut up with the 
rooster in the room first prepared. After two days he was returned 
to the out-door flock, which was now reduced -to four, and again, 
