LARGEST EGO SCORE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 23 December 1938, Page 3

LARGEST EGO SCORE

A REMARKABLE HEN. What is the largest egg score put up in the life of a single hen? The longest official record that we have heard of has been.registered recently by a White Leghorn on a poultry farm at Emlichheim, Hanover, Germany. This remarkable hen, hatched in 1925, died 11 years later in 1936, having laid 1,395 eggs. Her full sequence is worth recording:—279 eggs (averaging 2£oz), 220, 192, 176, 148, 132, 55, 112, 77, 4. Yet this record is by no means outstanding on a farm which has made a special study of longevity in connection with stamina.

The farm is not only concerned with poultry. The proprietor, Herr Vai ten Brink, also breeds pigs and cows and uses 30 acres for arable. He has 80 acres and employs a staff of 40.

He’ has been a breeder since 1903, and has been line breeding White Leghorns since 1923. He sells over 100,000 chicks yearly, and at the same time maintains a flock of 6,500, and replenishes his stock yearly from 350 to 400 special White Leghorn hens mated in single pens of 15 birds. In order that he may know exactly what progeny these 400 hens produce, he does not sell any daughters from these particular birds, and only a limited number of cockerels. He gets an average of 15 daughters from each hen —in spite of the fact that these hens are from two to nine years old —and in some cases they produce up to 30 pullets.