PROFITABLE EGG FARMING. 
The Maine Experiment Station Nest Boxes in Position. 
thus selecting each year the most vigorous 
descendants of your best layers, you will in¬ 
tensify both these qualities in your strain and 
produce layers that will lay more eggs than 
their ancestors did. 
When you have arrived at this period of your 
breeding operations, that* is, when, by a few 
years of this systematic breeding you have 
fixed vigor and a good egg record in your 
strain, you can profitably practice some in- 
breeding. By inbreeding you can improve your 
egg yield quicker than by selection. But be 
very careful to select only the most vigorous 
and healthiest individuals from your few best 
layers. 
We will suppose you have just such a hen with 
a large egg record. You can mate her to her 
most vigorous and best developed son, and in 
this same pen you may also put the hens which 
have given you the largest number of eggs. 
The following year you can mate one of these 
inbred cockerels to the pullets bred by the first 
cockerel, but out of the other hens—they will 
be half sisters. Of course, you will always pick 
out your highest record hens to mate to these 
choice breeders. 
You will be pleased with egg records of the 
pullets bred from this last mating. The major¬ 
ity will be excellent layers, and will be the very 
best of breeders. If you have been careful to 
select only vigorous birds and the best layers in 
your matings, you will notice very soon a great 
improvement in the average egg yield. You 
can then use these inbred cockerels on unre¬ 
lated hens, but only on the good layers, and 
then follow up as before. 
Great productiveness in our hens is a trait 
which can be easily fixed by breeding. The 
principles governing our breeding are the same 
as those which apply to all other classes of 
animal breeding; it is only the application that 
differs. With the fancier it is feathers, with 
us it is eggs; both can be developed to perfection 
by the same principles of breeding. There is 
nothing to prevent you, if you so desire, from 
improving both the egg yield and exhibition 
points of your strain, but the progress will be 
much slower. The results, however, will be 
more pleasing in the end. To us this question 
of breeding layers is a most fascinating one, and 
it is one which offers more real advantages to 
the interested poultryman than would be be¬ 
lieved at first. Breeding from our best layers 
systematically is, to our way of thinking, the 
only sure way of increasing the profits.— Reli¬ 
able Poultry Journal. 
A Nest Box for Keeping Individual Egg Records* 
[Reprintecrfrom the 13th Annual Report of the Maine Agricul- 
tural Experiment Station.] 
Desiring to conduct experiments in breeding 
hens we found it necessary, first, to be able to 
determine the-eggs produced by each individual. 
Several appliances and patented devices were 
examined, but all seemed open to the objection 
that while they might indicate to an extent the 
producer of the egg, the lack of certainty would 
be so great as to render them of little value for 
our purpose. We constructed a nest that proved 
so satisfactory that we placed fifty-two of them 
in the breeding-house, where they have been 
in use several months. They enable us to 
know the eggs produced by each bird with 
certainty. The boxes are placed four in a bank, 
and slide in and out like drawers, and can be 
carried away for cleaning if necessary. If 
desired they could be put on the floor or shelf 
by simply having a cover to each box. 
Our breeding pens are ten by sixteen feet in 
size, and there are twenty hens and a cockerel 
in each one. Four nests in each pen have ac¬ 
commodated the birds by the attendant going 
through the pens once an hour during that part 
38 
