HISTORY OF ANCONAS 
Circular No. 150, issued by the Col¬ 
lege of Agriculture, University of Ar¬ 
kansas, Fayetteville, Arkansas, certi¬ 
fied to by Prof. S. R. Strout, in charge 
of the Seventh Arkansas State Egg 
Laying Contest, 1921, and approved by 
Bradford Knapp, Dean and Director; 
also by H. E. Dvoracheck, Head of 
Dept.. gives out these figures: “The 
amount of feed, gra n and dry mash, 
required by different breeds to pro¬ 
duce one dozen eggs is: 
Barred Rocks-5.72 pounds 
White Rocks-6.81 pounds 
Columbia Rocks_6.80 pounds 
Rhode Islands _7.19 pounds 
White Wyandottes __ 5.85 pounds 
S. C. White Leghorns 4.91 pounds 
Buff Orpingtons_7.07 pounds 
Mottled Anconas _4.66 pounds' 
The Missouri Experiment Station 
has a reputation of being one of the 
very best in the country, and in its Na¬ 
tional Egg Laying Contest, in which 
nearly twenty different breeds partici¬ 
pated, aggregating over one thousand 
hens, it was found that one hundred 
pounds of feed, consumed by different 
breeds, produced eggs as follows: 
Anconas _ 300 eggs 
Leghorns _ 268 eggs 
Wyandottes _251 eggs 
Orp ngtons _ 230 eggs 
Camp.'nes _ 225 eggs 
Minorcas _ 203 eggs 
Plymouth Rocks-188 eggs 
Langshans _179 eggs 
And in addition to the wonderful ad¬ 
vantage of the Anconas, the Ancona 
eggs weighed more per dozen than 
eggs from any other breed. And An¬ 
conas laid the largest per cent of eggs 
during the winter months. 
13 
The 1920 Manitoba Egg-Laying Con¬ 
test, conducted by the Dominion Ex¬ 
periment Farm at Brandon, Manitoba, 
Canada, closed October 30, 1920. The 
Contest began November 1, 1919, and 
continued for one year. 
Each pen in the Contest contained 
ten birds. There were pens of Barred 
Plymouth Rocks, Rhode Island Reds, 
White Leghorns, Brown Leghorns, 
White Wyandottes, Silver Laced Wyan¬ 
dottes, Buff Orpingtons, Partridge Ply¬ 
mouth Rocks, Campines, and Anconas. 
The Plymouth Rock pens made rec¬ 
ords of 966, 1243, and 1317 eggs for the 
year, 
The Rhode Island Red pen made a 
record of 1830 eggs for the year. 
The Wyandotte pens made a record 
of 1361, 1482, 1765, and 1842 eggs for 
the year. 
The Leghorn pens made a record of 
1367, 1479, and 1722 eggs for the year. 
The Ancona pen made a record of 
2041 eggs for the year, winning by a 
large margin over nine other breeds. 
These figures furnished by W. C. Mc- 
Killican, B. S. A., Superintendent of the 
Dominion Experiment Farms, and W. 
Watkins, manager of the Contest, un¬ 
der date of November 3, 1920. 
It is interesting to note that no pen 
of any breed in the several Egg-Laying 
Contests held in various Provinces of 
Canada, equalled this Ancona record. 
Canada has an extremely cold winter 
climate, and the winter of 1919-1920 
was especially severe, yet Anconas 
made a remarkable egg record. 
The three highest pens in the Mur- 
physboro, Ill., Egg-Laying Contest 1921- 
22 are Anconas. The highest egg rec¬ 
ord for an individual hen in this Con¬ 
test is also held by an Ancona. 
