60 
THE RURAL, NEW-YORKER 
January 10, 
\ 
The Henyard. 
Trap Nests Under Dropping Board. 
Trap nests, unless placed under the 
dropping boards, are apt to form tempt¬ 
ing roosting places for the fowls, if they 
are not capped in some way so that the 
fowls cannot obtain a footing on them. 
Nests under dropping boards are general¬ 
ly arranged so that hens enter from the 
rear, and provision is made to gather the 
eggs from the front. With the trap-nest, 
however, the hen enters from the front 
and is removed the same way. 
There are many good nests on the 
market ready built, but a tier of service¬ 
able traps can be built from cracker 
boxes if you have small fowls, or match 
boxes for the larger fowls. Remove 
from each side of the box, near the top. 
a strip of wood an inch wide. This will 
admit light and air. From one end of 
the box, which we will now call the front, 
cut a square opening a little larger than 
the hen that is to use it. Take the ma¬ 
terial sawed from the front and make a 
door hinged at the top and so hung that 
it will swing very easily inward but not 
at all outward. If a strip 1*4 inches 
wide be cut from each side of this door 
the hen will open it herself on seeing the 
egg inside. Eight inches back from the 
front, across the bottom of the box, nail 
an upright strip three inches high. Back 
of this put the straw and nest egg. If 
the door be made solid it will have to 
be propped open by a short stick set un¬ 
der one edge. The hen will then enter 
and in stepping over the partition raise 
the door a little, dropping the stick and 
permitting the door to close behind her. 
In arranging a nest of this sort under 
the dropping boards, do not forget to 
place a three or four-inch board a little in 
front of and level with the bottom of the 
nest for the hen to fly up to from the 
floor. 
Have all fowls banded with numbered 
bands that will stay put. When a hen 
had laid she will stand in the front part 
of the box waiting to be removed. Do 
this by raising the door with one hand 
and allowing the hen to walk into your 
other hand to have her number noted. 
Not over one egg in five hundred will be 
broken by the hens in this kind of a nest. 
Michigan. r. L. w. 
Eliminating Non-layers by Examination. 
In a recent issue of Tiie R. N.-Y. M. 
B. D., in answering an inquiry about the 
condition of the pelvic bones in fowis 
he had bought for breeders, passes over 
rather lightly what is a very important 
means of telling whether hens are laying 
or not, whether they ever have laid or 
are, or have been, prolific layers of large 
eggs. Because this physiological knowl¬ 
edge w'as sold at absurd prices, and 
claimed to be an infallible test of the 
fecundity of the hens, need not relegate 
the large amount of useful truth in it to 
the discard, especially as it is of financial 
importance to be able to cull out all non¬ 
laying pullets in January and sell them 
as roasting chickens, thus cutting down 
feed bills and converting non-profitable 
producers into cash, and again in June 
I sell off all hens that have stopped lay¬ 
ing except those to be carried over as 
breeders. A pullet that has never laid 
has the end of the pelvic bones rigid and 
close together. The orifice of the vent is 
yellow% an-d closely contracted. When 
she starts to lay the cartilage joint of 
the pelvic bones becomes soft and elastic, 
allowing the tips of these bones to spread 
apart easily, and leaving a space between 
these tips of the width of two or three 
finger tips. The vent becomes moist, 
easily opened and showing the mucous 
lining to be dark pink and quite moist. 
Given these conditions we can state quite 
positively that she is laying, as we can 
say in a cow where the pelvic bones be¬ 
come loose and settle that she will soon 
drop a calf. After the hen has laid out 
and is sitting, resting or moulting the 
mucous membrane becomes paler, and 
the pelvic bones become more rigid, and 
settle with the points nearer together, 
but never lose the unmistakable evidence 
that she has laid. The distance between 
the pelvic bones and the size and elasti¬ 
city of the mucous lining of the vent de¬ 
termine whether she lays a large or a 
small egg. buchanan burr. 
Line-breeding in Poultry. 
What is line-breeding in fowls, and 
how is it carried on? w. A. ALLEN. 
Bridgeport, O. 
Line or inbreeding consists in mating 
animals to their own near kin, instead of 
going outside the family for new blood. 
The distinction between line, and inbreed¬ 
ing is not clearly made, but inbreeding 
is, perhaps, usually understood as mating 
sire or dam to their direct descendants, 
as daughter, granddaughter, etc., or son, 
grandson, and great-grandson in the case 
of females. Line breeding would, then, 
be mating animals of less close degree of 
relationship, but still belonging to the 
same family;-as cousins, uncle and niece, 
etc. A flock of fowls into which no new 
blood is introduced from year to year is 
said to be inbred, as all members of the 
flock quickly become closely related. 
Pekin Ducks vs. White Leghorns. 
Once more, is there money in hens? 
From experiment station results and from 
the records of practical poultrymen who 
keep close tab on their expenditures, it 
would seem to cost from $1.80 to $2.10 to 
feed a hen a year, at the present cost 
of feeds. And this too when Purchasing 
supplies in fairly large quantities. Now 
if a fair commercial yield is 120 eggs per 
year, at say an average price of 30 cents 
per dozen, where is the labor income when 
such factors as interest, depreciation ex¬ 
tra help, repairs and losses of various 
kinds are considered? It is a rare thing 
for a man to fail at raising White Pekin 
ducks. When handled properly these 
birds will weigh five to six pounds at 10 
weeks, and the price has been uniformly 
good for several years. In certain sec¬ 
tions many folks have been raised to af¬ 
fluence at this business. Have any of 
your readers, raising both White Leg¬ 
horns and White Pekin ducks in a com¬ 
mercial way, ever made a comparison of 
the profits from each? a. c. 
New York. 
R. N.-Y.—We welcome such compara¬ 
tive figures. 
Can Hens Control Laying? 
I read with- much interest Mr. Cos¬ 
grove’s remarks on page 1337 regarding 
the control by the hen of egg production. 
This may be an exceptional case, but I 
know of a hen being found dead, and on 
opening, a large cluster of eggs was found 
all ready with yolk and albumen but no 
shell. Each egg as it left the cluster and 
entered the oviduct simply joined onto 
the first original egg, and so on until filled 
with eggs. This must have caused pain 
or at least irritation, and if the hen has 
the power of stopping production, why did 
she allow this to happen as I have illus¬ 
trated? I do not know of anything that 
has interested me more than Mr. Cos¬ 
grove’s remarks, and I ■wish you would 
publish any criticisms of his statements. 
The question is, wnat surroundings does 
a hen need for constant egg production? 
New York. f. a. 
The above is a very interesting case. 
I never heard of one like it. At first 
thought it would seem to militate against 
the theory that a hen can stop or con¬ 
trol egg production. Perhaps it is not 
the will or caprice of the hen that stops 
egg production, but the nervous shock 
which she sustains when moved to a new 
location, or when frightened. I had a 
hen that on being killed and opened, was 
found to have her abdomen filled with the 
cooked yolks of eggs The mass was as 
large as the doubled up fist of a large 
man. But it will be noticed that in neith¬ 
er of these cases was there any sudden 
shock to the nerves; the hens remained 
in their accustomed surroundings, with 
their usual food, etc., and rhere was 
nothing to stop the usual processes of 
nature. In the case I mentioned above 
the heat of the body had actually cooked 
the yolks, so that it was one solid mass. 
The cause was undoubtedly a ruptured 
oviduct; allowing the yolk to fall into 
the abdominal cavity. The white or 
albumen of the eggs was not visible at 
all; whether the yolk was dropped 
through before it reached the place where 
the white surrounds it, or whether the 
more liquid white was absorbed into the 
system, I don’t pretend to say. I wish 
someone would explain why part of the 
hens at the contest stop laying after the 
first fow r days, and others in the same sur¬ 
roundings continue right on. There is 
a good deal yet to bo learned in the poul¬ 
try business. geo. a. cosgrove. 
Cotton-Seed Meal for Hens. 
Cotton-seed meal seems to be a cheap 
source of protein. For chickens would 
it be a good supplement for corn grain 
ration and dry mash bran and shorts, 
and in what proportion? c. w. M. 
Cotton-seed meal has not found favor 
as a food for poultry, and has, in fact, 
been considered absolutely dangerous by 
good authorities. The Mississippi Agri¬ 
cultural Station has recently issued a 
bulletin, however, describing a series of 
experiments in which cotton-seed meal 
was made to replace meat scraps as a 
source of protein, and with apparently 
good results. Their work has not been 
conclusive but they state that it has 
tended to show that “As far as can be 
determined, the general condition of cot¬ 
ton-seed meal-fed ■'owls seems just as 
good as that of those fed upon beef 
scraps.” They feed as large a proportion 
as 22 pounds in 98 of dry mash constant¬ 
ly before the fowls. While their feeding 
experiments seem to indicate that cotton¬ 
seed meal is of value as a poultry food, 
they do not unreservedly command it, 
but say that much longer tests are needed 
to ascertain its cumulative effects. 
“Why is it,” queried the fair widow, 
that they always say a man ‘pines’ for 
a woman?” “I suppose,” growled the 
fussy bachelor, “it’s because the pine is 
about the softest wood there is.” —Path¬ 
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