Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 134, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 June 1915 — BREEDING FOR EGGS [ARTICLE]

BREEDING FOR EGGS

Better to Produce 120 Eggs a Year and Remain Healthy. While we believe in breeding up for heavy records, at the same time we would rather have our hens average 120 eggs a year and remain in robust health than to have their systems drained of vitality in the race to pass the 200 mark. There is a reason in all things. If we are to forget our stock ahead to be champion layers we are going to do it at the sacrifice of something else. What will become of our meat supply if we are going to put all the forces to work on eggs? When we spend our food and attention on the fowl with a view to creating an ideal carcass do we not make th egg yield suffer? Will not this unnatural flow of eggs tend to cripple fertility and make weak, puny chicks? Why not work for both eggs and meat? Why not have a limit? If we can gradually increase the powers of a hen so that she will average 300 eggs a year and still maintain health and meat qualifications, it is advisable to go ahead. But to build up the one at the expense of the other wilt eventually produce a delicate race. W want the 200-egg hen if we can get her with! nreason. Let it be remembered that the egg that is held three or four weeks is the one that causes so much loss. It is the egg that is hard to detect, and only by skillful labor that proves so unsatisfactory from producer to consumer. The greatest evil we have to contend with is the egg that is held in the nest by the producer until he is ready to take it to market, which is perhaps once a week; or held in an unfit basement, where it becomes moldy; in the bucket of bran, in the jar of salt, or in must and unfit cooler. It is this practice that is holding back the regular supply of strictly fresh eggs, because the shipper does not make a distinction between the egg that is brought to him fresh, and the one that has been held. How can the p-oducer be expected to fake pains when he receives no reward? Is it not common sense that the producer should insist that the eggs be gathered daily, that the nests be kept clean, in order that he may realize two to five cents per doxen more for his eggs; ahd should such eggs not be worth more than those that are gathered when the grass or wheat is cut, and found by the harvester as he passes over the field? When the leg is bent, the bird cannot open its foot That is why it does not fall off of the perch at night when asleep. When a hen is walking it -Inins its toes as it raises the foot and opens them as it touches the ground.