Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1906-07-19
TIME TO USE THE RATCHET
Necessity of culling Out the Old and
Improbable Members of
Flock.

It is about the time Of the year
when the Ratchet should be doing
business in the poultry yard. A great
many hens should now be going to
market. Sooner or later they must
go to market or be buried under the
sod, and better sooner before their
owner has lost on their keep all the
profit they made him in the first two
years of their age. The young stock
is coming on now and they will need
the room and the care that the old
hens are taking.
There can be no questioa now that
the value of the hen decreases with
age. That has been pretty thoroughly
settled by experiments made at the
Utah station by James Dryden. One
paragraph of his reports reads as fol-
lows:
"Our experiments in previous years
on the most profitable age of the hen,
showed average pen results as fol-
lows for Leghorn hens: First year,
average per hen, 164 eggs; second
year 126 eggs" These were pen av'
erages. 1t was found by keeping trap
nest records of individual hens, that
in a few cases individual hens laid
more eggs the second year than the
first. This was no doubt due to the
conditions for good egg-yield being
better the second than the first year.
To quote again from the report:
Averaging the results of all indi-
vidual hens for which we have two
years records, we have the following:
Thirteen Brown Leghorns laid an av-
erage of 1913 eggs the first year per
hen and 157 the second; four White
Leghorns averaged 1873 the first yeas
and 95 the second; five Barred
Plymouth Rocks averaged 1874 eggs
the first year and 10 the second; six
teen White Wyandottes averaged Ito
the first year and Ill the second;
three White Plymouth Rocks averaged
1872 the first year and 129 the second.
There were Al hens Of the differ
ent breeds for which records are COM
plete for two years, and we find that
they averaged II eggs per fowl the
first year and 125 the second, or 40
per cent. more the first year than
the second"
It is explained that this is not a
breed test and no conclusion should
be drawn from these records as re-
CARDS laying merits of the different
breeds. These records covered the
laying year. The following paragraph
Of the report is of interest as show
ing whether the hens or the bullets
are the better winter layers. 1t is
possible that the poorer layer by lay
ing more eggs in winter is the more
profitable, but the experiments did
not bear out this contention:
1.-THE Al individual hens whose rec.
ords are given laid 916 eggs as pull
! let's before February 1, and as year
old hens they laid only 437 to the
same date. This would show that the
pullets not only lay more eggs during
j the last year than the hens, but they
y lay a larger proportion of them in
= winter than the hens"
These records, comments the Ohio
Farmer, show a remarkable falling
!, off in the second years laying. Other
] tests made showed that the falling
off in the third and fourth years was
ever greater than in the second year
" The results on the whole showed thai
there may be a profit in keeping hen;
two years, but after that there was
almost a certain loss in keeping them
i 1t is no use in farmers saying there
d Is no money in hens so long as they
do not know how to use the hatche'
S properly in the poultry yard.