SELECTING LAYERS.

King Country Chronicle, Volume VI, Issue 437, 7 February 1912, Page 6

SELECTING LAYERS.

A hen that is soonest off the roost in the morning, and the last to retire at night, is what we called a hustler. She is looking for something to eat from which to produce an egg. A hen, to produce eggs in large quantities, must have good capacity to take food, and good digestive organs to digest and assimilate the food eaten. You naturally, therefore, look for a long keel, apparently lengthened by a full breast, filled out square with the keel by a good full crop. In such a hen the abdomen, while not bagging down much, will be well distended, showing egg capacity. You seldom see a hen narrow between the legs and abdominal lines straight back from the legs, giving her a squeezed in appearance from behind, that is a heavy producer. She is like a dairy cow built on beef lines. If she has a bright eye, red, healthy-looking comb and head adjuncts, and his that alert carriage coupled with ;the other characteristics mentioned, she is pretty surely a profitable hen, and watching will prove her the bird for the breeding pen to increase your egg production, and at the same time a carcase built on these lines is capable of supplying a trade for fancy table food.