116 COMMON SENSE 
Under Wap at Last— More Help Needed. 
SMHE enterprise was now fully under way. More than 
|) half the laying stock was on hand; a goodly number 
of young chickens were coming forward for next year, and 
I felt that twelve months from the time of which I write I would 
have my poultry farm in full working order, and that the question 
of success or failure would have been decided. Already we began 
to get some returns in the shape of eggs, although, of course, the 
number was small—about six dozen per day from all our hens. 
Still this was quite as much as I expected, for experience has 
taught me that hens which have been worried and frightened, and 
probably kept on short allowance of food and water while passing 
from the hands of the seller to that of the purchaser, cannot be 
expected to lay for some time. Hence, I have always found that 
for the time being, other things being equal, birds reared on a 
place are much more valuable for chat place than those that are 
pnrchased. After a time, however, the birds pick up and begin to 
lay, and it is just possible that the stoppage caused by moving may 
throw the laying period into a later and more profitable season. 
This was my case precisely. The hens kept laying more and 
more as the season grew later and eggs grew dearer, and this was, 
of course, to my advantage. 
| A great deal of nonsense has been written about egg laying which 
it would be well if poultry breeders would get out of their heads. 
One of the most erroneous and yet most plausible theories is that 
advanced by Geyelin in his book “ Poultry Breeding in a Commer- 
cial Point of View.” He gravely tells us that “it has been ascer- 
tained that the ovarium of a fowl is composed of six hundred 
ovulas or eggs; therefore, a hen, during the whole of her life, can- 
not possibly lay more eggs than six hundred, which, in a natural 
course, are distributed over nine years in the following proportion ;. 
