ti-ik location i\ 



woman, or child, that much time and trouble will be saved by install- 

 ing nests enough to properly care for the egg yield. I have no doubt 

 that I lose sales by emphasizing- this point. I know that some go to 

 greater expense lor a less number of some other make of nests that oc- 

 cupy more room and then spend more time attending to them than my 

 customers will find necessary. I think it better to be right, however, 

 sales or no sales. 



THE LOCATION OF THE TRAP NESTS IN THE 

 POULTRY HOUSE. 



That the somewhat limited space under the roosting platforms is a 

 convenient and desirable place for. a portion of the trap nests, or even 

 for all of them in some houses, I will allow, but to my mind there are 

 several very important reasons why this location should not be selected 

 as the best, or to the exclusion of all others, in the great majority of 

 poultry houses. 



First it is perhaps unnecessary to say that many poultry houses are 

 not provided with droppings-boards, and that in many more that are, 

 there is not sufficient room beneath them for the necessary number of 

 trap nests ; hence some other location must be considered for at least a 

 part of them. Individuality is a strong characteristic of some fowls, as 

 well as some men, and wliile it is possible to train them to do as we 

 wish in many things, it is equally impossible to teach all of them to do 

 our bidding. To succeed in coaxing every laying member of a flock of 

 hens to deposit her eggs in just such a nest, placed in just such a spot 

 as we have decided to be the correct one, will be no light task unless 

 the flock be very small, and not always then. I once had a hen that re- 

 fused to lay in any of the open nests placed on the floor of the pen. 

 Her egg was always found on the floor, (we were able to distinguish it 

 from the others, for the hens were mongrels and her egg was unlike the 

 rest) , but a nest box having been placed on top of a barrel she at once 

 adopted it as hers and laid in it right along. When the box was again 

 placed on the floor this hen laid on top of the barrel. It is this trait in 

 some members of the flock that will account, in some cases, for the 

 eggs that are laid outside of the trap nests. 



Wlule it may be possible to teach 'the hens to use the nests by being 

 constantly on hand, and when one is found sitting on the floor placing 

 her in a nest, I have found it to be much easier to so place the nests in the 

 house that the cranky members of the flock should find one suited to 

 their peculiar notions. The fact that out of 1,368 eggs laid by one pen 

 of mixed hens and pullets, none were found outside the trap nests, may 

 perhaps give some color to what many might call a theory. In this pen 



