CL'LUXi; t-ni; riiuKiT 4!) 



good eggs, early laying should not In- forced. Forcing, or encouraging 

 pullets to lay early and freely max- Iks all right when immediate profit 

 is the only end in view, but such forcing, if successful, checks growth 

 and the development of the vital organs, and is mainly responsible for 

 the undersized pullet's-egg. Some of 1he best and most profitable lay- 

 ers that! have ever had did not lay early, but when they did begin they 

 soon distanced their more precocious mates. Jf the precocious pul- 

 let lays a short time and then stops, as she is very likely to do, she may 

 catch up with the procession, in time. 



When a millet lays her first egg in the nest we give her a numbered 

 leg-band and hernumber goes on the record sheet. After allowing her 

 a reasonable time for practice, we will expect her to get right down to 

 business. If our feed and care are such that well developed pullets are 

 laying from 15 to 25 or more eggs per month those pullets of the same 

 breed and equal age (hat lav 12 eggs or less per month are marked for 

 the block unless we can trace the trouble to some individual condition 

 that is easily remedied. 1 emphasize ritnilt/ because it is not often prac- 

 ticable to go to a great deal of trouble in such cases. Where one has a 

 spare pen it may be well to place such birds by themselves and give 

 them different treatment for a while and watch results. I have tried 

 this a number of times and the results never warranted the trouble ex- 

 cept in the information gained. If we have no spare pen it would ob- 

 viously be bad practice to change the ration of the good layers in the 

 hope of improving the poor layers. This, I think, is often done 

 unknowingly. 



I have never had any harm result from moving the persistent layers 

 about, after they were well started in laying, when I wanted to bunch 

 them together. 



The pullet that does not begin to lay when she can reasonably be ex- 

 pected to, when the conditions and feed are right for her mates, she too 

 is condemned. In this connection I will refer to a type of pullet that 

 might appear to be a freak to some. She will, very naturally, puzzle 

 those who find her for the first time. She is common enough I im- 

 agine. Such a pullet may have been laying and thus have gained a 

 place on the record sheet or she may not have laid at all; yet we re- 

 peatedly find her upon the nest. As pullets generally visit the nest a 

 few times before the first egg is laid this case does not at first occasion 

 remark, but soon we find that she is peculiar. She is found on the 

 nest day after day, some limes several times a day, for a long period. 

 A careful test, shows that she is not an egg eater. The following ac- 

 count of such pullets was printed in The 1'oliltuv Kkepeh, Sept., 1902. 

 and illustrates my point. 



