LAYING HENS HAVE GOOD APPLTITLS. 149 



Those rations may be used as given, or, if it is desired to further cheapen the cost of feeding, 

 the proportion of corn and corn meal iu them may be increa^ed, especially for hens that are 

 evidently not overfat, or that are laying. After hens begin to lay it is not as necessary to 

 guard against overfeeding and overfattening as it is with those that are not laying. When the 

 reproductive organs are active the tendency is for them to talie and use all available nourish- 

 ment. When the reproductive organs are not acting the fowl, as a rule, eats less, though it 

 may still eat more than is required for maintenance. When that is the case the surplus goes to 

 fat. How far such fut lis is accumulated prevents laying, is a question not yet satisfactorily 

 answered. 1 thinli that there are relatively few cases where the ovaries of the hen are normal 

 where any ordinary accumulation of fat prevents laying. There is some reason to suppose 

 that the activity of the ovaries, and consequent production of eggs, are often retarded for 

 months after the hen is otherwise fully developed, and that the reasons for this are not easily 

 controlled. When this is the case a hen is liliely to fatten, but when the ovaries do become 

 active — which may be earlier in the winter, but is more liisely to occur after midwinter — 

 these fat hens and pullets usually lay a few abnormal egijs, and then lay normal eggs regularly 

 — and usually such hens after beginning are heavy layers for that l^eriod. I speak of this 

 because of the prevailing impression that slightly overfat hens will not lay — that there is a 

 point in physical condition that must not be passed if hens are to produce eggs. 



The conditions in winter admit of more latitude in liberality of feeding, as well as of the use 

 of more of the "fattening" foods. Whole corn may be used quite freely during the cold 

 weather, but as spring approaches should be fed with more caution, especially if the fowls 

 generally show a tendency to become very fat, and they are to be kept through the spring and 

 summer. Meat and bone may also be fed more freely than in warm weather. 



For vegetable food clover, alfalfa, cabbage, mangels, and waste vegetables of nearly all kinds 

 are used, and there is practically no danger of using too much of anything of this kind that is 

 fed separately to fowls lilierally provided with grain. 



Rarity of Heavy Laying in November and December. 



Novices in poultry keeping are quite generally under some misapprehension as to what is 

 considered a good egg yield in these months. While occasionally better yields are obtained a 

 yield of twenty to thirty per cent is an unusually good yield, and a poultryman who is getting 

 as much as a ten per cent yield from liis flock in November, has no reason to feel dissatisfied, 

 and much reason to feel encouraged. Those who watch their flocks closely enough to get some 

 Id^a of what individuals are doing, and of the relative proportions of pullets of the same age 

 that are laying and not laying at this season are likely to discover that for most pullets the age 

 at which they begin to lay is greater than the age usually given for laying maturity in their 

 breed, and this knowledge can be turned Ijo account next season by hatching enough earlier to 

 have the bulk of the stock come to laying at the desired time, though the earliest layers may 

 lay earlier than is desirable. 



