How Corning Farm Produces Unrelated Cockerels
The Method of The Corning Egg Farm is as follows: a pen of carefully selected yearling hens is set aside in what is known as “the pen for the production of unrelated cockerels.” A most carefully selected cockerel to every twelve hens is placed in the pen. Incubators are run with eggs from this pen only, and the resulting chicks are marked before being placed in the Brooder House. The cockerels which appear with this marking are grown to maturity, those coming up to our standard being selected to head the breeding pens for the following season. The marked pullets are placed in the Laying Houses with the other pullets, but are never selected for yearling breeders on our own Farm. In pens sold to others we always furnish unrelated cockerels.
Having hatched a sufficient number of chicks to produce about four hundred cockerels, no further eggs are set from this pen, and, at the end of the season, all the birds comprising this pen are sold.
This Method of line breeding hands down the laying quality which has been so developed, and which is being increased from season to season in an unbroken line, but inbreeding is absolutely avoided, and the vigor of the stock is maintained.
Perhaps, in closing the chapter, nothing could be more apt than a letter received from a Breeder of Crystal White Orpingtons, in the neighborhood of one of the large Western Cities. The letter-head, in large type, states, “Breeder of Crystal White Orpingtons, the Great Winter Layer.” The contents of the letter is as follows:
“As I am now planning to go into the Egg business, and desire to follow your method as closely as possible, and, while in this locality there is not such a marked preference for the white egg over the brown, still the White Leghorn, of a good strain, doubtless outlays any other breed known, and the shape of its egg is such that it is superior for table use, to any laid by the dark shelled family. It, therefore, is my purpose, as rapidly as possible to work into a large flock of Leghorns, with Corning stock as a basis.”
It will be noted that the gentleman is a breeder of Crystal White Orpingtons, and prints in large type on his letter-head, “The Great Winter Layer,” but that when it comes down to “brass tacks,” from the standpoint of the hen which will produce an egg for table use, and the hen that will give you the requisite number to make the dollars, the Breeder of the Crystal White Orpingtons wants to put in the Corning Strain of Single Comb White Leghorns.
CHAPTER VI
Advantages of the Large Flock System—Reduces Cost of Housing and Economizes in Time and Labor
For many years the floor space per hen has been an interesting study to anyone reading poultry literature, either in books or in magazine articles.
Some fifteen years ago it was generally considered for a hen to do at all well she must have at least twenty square feet of floor space. Later, the number of feet was divided by half, and for some time ten square feet was considered to be the very least a hen could possibly do with. Then we come to the four square feet period, and this created a great deal of controversy. Many writers declared that it was impossible for any hen, no matter how housed, to do well in such a restricted space. At times, some visionary writer pictured a flock in one house, of what was then considered an enormous size. One Professor of poultry went so far as to state that he had successfully kept some three hundred hens in one flock, and had obtained most satisfactory results. This statement, however, was denied by others, and the Professor wrote an article in which he set forth that, while he had done this, he would never think of suggesting that the average poultry-keeper attempt it. In his statement there were some truths that it is well to remember, namely, that the average poultry-keeper would not give the flock the care and supervision necessary to keep it in health. In other words, the poultry-keeper would not attend to the necessary cleanliness, and disease would break out, and, in the average poultry house, under such conditions, this would mean the total annihilation of the flock.
THREE STERILE LAYING HOUSES CONTAINING 4500 PULLETS, WITH A FLOOR SPACE OF 7680 SQUARE FEET