BUILDING UP A LAYING STRAIN 



107 



Lady Cornell is a single comb white Leghorn and 

 only weighs 3.2 pounds, and by laying 257 eggs av- 

 eraging 1.8 ounces each this hen's productive ability 

 during that period was 9.2 pounds of eggs for each 

 pound of her live weight. This is a remarkable per- 

 formance. In this hen's second year she laid 200 

 eggs weighing 23.69 pounds, or a total egg yield for 

 two consecutive years of 457 eggs weighing 53.19 

 pounds. 



The wonderful showing made by this Leghorn 

 hen proves the truth of Dr. W. H. Joi dan's state- 

 ment that the productiveness of the hen is greater 

 than a Jersey cow in comparative live weights. Dr. 

 Jordan, director of the New York experiment sta- 

 tion, says: "If you take the dry matter of the hen 

 and compare it with the dry matter in the eggs she 

 lays in a year there will be five and one-half times 

 as much dry matter in the eggs as in her whole body. 

 The weight of dry matter in the cow's body to the 

 weight of the dry matter in the milk will be as 

 I to 2.9. 



"In other words, based upon the dry matter, the 

 hen does twice as well as the cow. I suspect the hen 

 is the most efficient transformer of raw material into 

 a finished product that there is on the farm. Her 

 physiological activity is something remarkable. So 

 in that particular the hen stands in a class by her- 

 self." 



In terms of dry matter it has been estimated that 



