98 THE AMERICAN BREEDS OF POULTRY 



the hens on light feed, oftentimes whole oats, and give them "a rest." 

 Every effort should be made, however, to prevent the vitality of 

 the birds from becoming lowered. This is especially important in 

 show stock, for, through lowered vitality, the bird may molt in some 

 white feathers where black, red or buff originally prevailed. Our own 

 notion is that birds in the molt should receive easily digested food 

 such as ground oats mixed with sour milk, and be given the range 

 of an orchard or creek flat, if possible. 



The opinion was somewhat general a few years ago that it paid 

 to throw the hens into a molt by a radical change in feed, cutting out 

 the mash and putting the birds on a light grain feed. The poultry 

 department at Cornell University carried on an experiment to deter- 

 mine the advisability of forcing fowls to shed their feathers early in 

 the season, with the hope of inducing them to lay earlier in the winter. 

 The findings indicated that 



It does not pay to "force a molt" by starvation methods and that apparently it 

 is good policy to encourage hens, by good care and feeding, to lay during late 

 summer and fall, rather than to resort to unusual means to stop laying in order to 

 induce an early molt, with the hope of increasing productiveness during the early 

 winter, a season whicli naturally is unfavorable for egg production. In short, it 

 appears wise, when hens want to lay, to let them lay. 



Some further data on the molt were published by the Poultry 

 Department, Cornell University, in Bulletin No. 258, September, 1908. 

 This bulletin is out of print now, but the data presented in it are as 

 applicable today as in the beginning, for the nature of hens has not 

 changed. We quote: 



The first mature molt comes at the end of the first year of laying. It seems to 

 be a necessary renewal of the worn-out plumage. Feathers, like clothes, wear out. 

 In the mature molt it was found that the molt seldom began while the hen was 

 laying. Quite a few feathers might be shed earlier in the season and during produc- 

 tion, but in most cases the shedding of featliers ceased for a week or two, often for 

 a much longer period, then the entire plumage was renewed. For convenience, this 

 latter part of the molt is termed the "general molt." During this molt some hens 

 shed only a few feathers at a time in the different feather tracts, looking we'll 

 clothed throughout the molt, while others shed almost the entire plumage at once. 



It is variously asserted that the time required for the growth of a body feather 

 on a healthy fowl is approximately forty-two days, while the time needed to develop 

 the_ tail is somewhat longer. This refers to pludked feathers. The usual molting 

 period of a hen cannot, however, be calculated accurately from this estimate. The 

 rnolting process continues much longer than is usually supposed, and there is con- 

 siderable variation in the time of beginning the molt between different individuals and 

 between flocks of different ages; also a wide variation in the length of time it 

 requires individuals to complete the molt. 



_ The fact that hens, though well fed, lost weight in the process of molt would 

 indicate something of the strain imposed on them by the production of new feathers. 

 It IS apparent that as molting increased egg production decreased. Almost without 

 exception this was true with both starved and fed flocks during each period ; it was 

 strikingly true during the starvation period. While some of the hens continued to 

 lay after beginning to molt, and a few began laying before completing their new 

 coat, no hen continued to lay during the entire molting period. 



Persistent layers, unless broody, appeared to begin the molt within a week after 

 the last egg, and usually were in heavy molt in less than two weeks. Those begin- 

 ning to molt after October first shed more quickly and refeather more rapidly than 



