32 
THE AUSTRALIAN GARDENER. 
“= ¢ Phe Pourbry Yarde ¢ & 
An American Authority on 
Australian Laying Records. 
The faithful little Leghorn has again 
demonstrated that she is a payer and a 
great money maker if given care and 
attention. We have at hand the records 
of the latest Australian laying competi- 
tion held at the Hawkesbury College, the 
original year tests, and note that a pen of 
six White Leghorns, Single Combs 
variety, made the remarkable record of 
1,379 eggs. For the two years just end- 
eda pen of Whites of the same breed 
made the record of 2,624 eggs, the same 
six hens competing from the start of 
the two years to the end. At the top of 
the list for the last year’s competition are 
five pens of Leghorns, all Whites, none 
of them falling below 1,812 eggs for the 
six hens or pullets inthe yard. This 
means something to the Australians, for 
they have been breeding now for about 
ten years for better layers and are getting 
them better every season. Black Orping- 
tons were sixth in line with a record for 
the year of 1,288 eggs. This breed also 
produced the highest number of eggs in 
one month, 159, A hundred and fourteen 
Leghorn layers in the last year’s test laid 
an average of 199 eggs each, which is 
pretty fair, anyhow, with the lowest pen 
of this going but 949. Black Orpingtons 
made an average of 177 eggs for each 
layer in the year’s contest. Egg laying 
competitions have been so helpful in 
getting the poultry industry of that 
country to the front that the breeders 
there have developed into the greatest 
fanciers the world has ever known and 
already hens from that sunny clime have 
travelled this way to make their mark 
The heat and dryness of the past couple 
of seasons has contributed largely to the 
successes of tha Leghorns, so Mr. Thomp- 
son says, who has charge of the contests, 
and on one day the glass rose to a hun- 
dred and sixteen, which puts a crimp in 
the record that Kansas set during her time 
of the blues. Forty hens succumbed to 
the heat on that day, so the report of the 
test declares. During the early tests the 
Black Orpingtons and the Silver Wyan- 
dotis held the palms for high averages 
and the men who are closest in touch 
with these tests say that when the cycle 
of wet years comes ‘round they will take 
their place at the head of the lists. 
Feeding for eggs has been reduced to a 
wonderful science in Australia, as the 
work of those who feed the layers to attain 
December 1, 1909 
such averages will attest. The poultry 
show and competition in it is not lacking 
there, either. They hold just as good 
shows as ever they did, but the laying 
contests keep the live fanciers awake 
every month of the year, for the etand- 
ings of the various pens are made known 
from month to month. Attempts over here 
to hold laying tests of any considerable 
scope have failed, but we hope before 
long to chronicle that breeders have at 
last agreed to get things going along this 
line. 
—‘American Poultry Journal’ 
Poultry Degenerating. 
A Michigan Farmer, in an exchange, 
writes the following on this subject:— 
Any of us can recall some instance in 
which someone has gotten a bad attack 
of hen fever, or a fever for some pure- 
bred fowls. Wecan also recall how this 
party would work early and late to fix a 
home for his fowls after they were 
purchased, besides reading all the poulry 
literature ho could gain possession of. In 
nearly every instance the fowls respond 
to his labours by shelling out eggs ata 
lively rate. Then how he would talk of 
his big egg yields, thinking that he had 
the only fowls on earth worth keeping. 
But just lay low a year. When the 
routine of poultry keeping gots to be an 
old story he will neglect the duties that a 
year previous would never have been left 
undone, and what is the result? We 
meet him on the street and ask him how 
his hens are laying. He will probably 
say, ‘Oh, just fair,’ but if you press him 
alittle he probably tell you he has been 
so busy with other work that he hasn’t 
given them the care and attention that 
he ought and they are not laying well. 
Just watch him for the next year or two 
and I wager that you will find him out of 
the poultry business and, when asked 
about it, he will tell you that those pesky 
hens were a lot of work and bother, and 
that they ate their heads off after the 
first year. 
This is no question but what the 
ancestors of our domestic fowls, no matter 
