Willmar tribune. [volume] (Willmar, Minn.) 1895-1931, 1906-07-18
|T Il Il s. USE THE=H TcH Fl:''ll'
:a 81 s.. g a ! ond
Necessity Of culling Out the : olo ana.
Improbable Members OF u:
Flock =: = S..

1t is about the time Of the year
when the Ratchet should be oolns
business in the poultry yard: Asgreae
MANY hens should now be go1ng@to
market. Sooner or later they hue'
go to market or be buried under tne
sod, and better sooner before tn5il
owner has lost on their keep all u. tue
profit they made him in the Hrst IVY
years of their age. The young SUN
is coming on now and they Will neeu
the room and the care that the ola
hens are taking.
There can be no question no" tnat
the value of the hen decreases Will
age. That has been pretty Thoroughly
settled by experiments made at tne
Utah station by James Dryden. One
paragraph of his reports reads as 1o1-
lows:
"Our experiments in previous years
on the most profitable age of the hen'
showed average pen results as 1ol-
lows for Leghorn hens: First year,
average per hen, 164 eggs; secono
year 126 eggs.'' These were pen av-
erages. It was found by keeping trap
nest records of individual hens, that
in few cases Individual hens la1o
more eggs the second year than the
first. This was no doubt due to the
conditions for good egg-yield BENG
better the second than the first year.
To quote again from the report:
Averaging the results of all 1nd1-
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 j.. 1873 the first year
and IS the second; five Barred
Plymouth Rocks averaged 154 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 1923 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
fret year and 125 the second, or 40
per cent. more the first year than
the second
It is explained that this is not
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 pullets
are the better winter layers. It 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:
"The Al individual hens whose rec
ords are given laid GIG 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
the last year than the hens, but they
lay larger proportion of them in
winter than the hens"
These records, comments the Ohio
Farmer, show remarkable falling
off in the second years laying. Other
tests made showed that the falling
off in the third and fourth years*WaS
even greater than in the second year.
The results on the whole showed that
there may be profit in keeping hens
two years, but after that there was
almost certain loss in keeping them.
1t is no use in farmers saying there
is no money in hens" so long as they
do not know how to use the hatchet
properly in the poultry yard.