BREEDING 193 
of 100, 200 or 400 hens the proportion of cockerels is 5, 10, 20, or 
one cockerel to 20 hens.” 
For heavy breeds fewer hens must go to each cockerel. In the 
early months half-a-dozen hens to every cockerel are sufficient, 
and never more than ten hens to one male bird should be used. 
To make certain of fertility even smaller numbers of hens may 
be employed. 
On the whole it is better to breed from small pens than from 
large flocks of birds. Six hens and a cockerel will usually give 
better results than twelve hens and two cockerels; indeed two 
cockerels in a pen is to be seriously deprecated, because of the 
fighting between the male birds. Three cockerels in a pen will 
generally behave very well and give good results ; and any number 
over three will work quite satisfactorily. 
Before leaving this subject it may be well to point out that eggs 
coming from a distance by rail will not hatch out nearly so well as 
eggs fertilised on one’s own farm. The shaking and jolting of the 
railway journey seems to disturb the contents of the egg and to 
partially destroy their hatching virtues. I heard last season of 
some disastrous attempts to hatch eggs from a long distance. In 
one instance a very large egg-farmer, wishing to introduce fresh 
blood, sent for ten settings of eggs. He is an expert breeder but 
he got less than a dozen chickens from them, and a second experi- 
ment of the same kind was very little better. My own experience 
is that with railway-borne eggs a hatch of 40 to 50 per cent. is about 
as much as one can expect, and there are times when even these 
modest figures are not reached. I may mention that Mr Hanson 
is not at all afraid of introducing fresh blood into his stock if the 
new birds are purchased from reliable breeders. No doubt his 
success with new blood is due to the fact that practically all the 
best English stock in White Leghorns is interrelated. 
