Before deciding we looked the different members of this family over with considerable care, and we found that the Single Comb White Leghorn is the fowl that out-classes all the others for the purpose of an egg farm. It is a bird, where properly bred, of great hardiness and stamina. It readily adapts itself to all conditions of climate, and, where the right “strain” is procured, it is never a disappointer as to the number, size, and the class of eggs which it produces. We, therefore, decided to adopt the Single Comb White Leghorn, and we have outlined, in a previous chapter, how we went to work to build up the unequaled Corning Strain, by the most careful selection, and scientific mating.
Prof. Gowell, at the Maine Agricultural Station, carried on his breeding with Barred Plymouth Rocks, and it is interesting to note that his average for some eight years, taking his star performers, was 134.27 eggs per hen for twelve months, while at The Corning Egg Farm the flocks of fifteen hundred pullets averaged per hen, for ten months laying, 143.25 eggs in 1909, and 145.11 eggs in 1910. Here was a difference of two months in time, and yet the large flocks, taken as a whole, not weeding out a few star performers, surpassed the twelve months’ record of the Barred Plymouth Rocks at the Maine Station by almost nine eggs in 1909, and ten eggs in 1910. This significant fact made considerable impression on a number of breeders in the neighborhood of Boston, with the result that, in the last two years, The Corning Egg Farm has supplied a large number of hatching eggs and considerable breeding stock for farms in New England.
As one gentleman from Boston pointed out, even with the difference in price between the brown and the white egg, he found that he could not really afford to continue with the breeds laying the brown egg, for the Leghorn, in numbers, more than made up for the slight difference in price between the two colors, in the Boston Market. And, as he still further pointed out, it took less food to supply the Leghorn than it did any of the larger breeds, and this, of course, was another source of economy.
It should be remembered that the “Strain” of any breed is most important. One may purchase White Leghorns where the inbreeding has been so great that they are not capable of laying eggs in large numbers, and the percentage of fertility from the hatching standpoint in such birds will be a most uncertain quantity. Such chicks as may be hatched will be far from strong, and the mortality will run into figures which will dishearten anyone.
Line Breeding—Not Inbreeding
In the building up of a great strain of birds it is necessary to “line breed,” for, if the old theory of introducing new blood to prevent inbreeding, and the method of introducing the new blood, was, as is done in so many places even to-day, by introducing males from other sources, the entire system falls down. Nothing is accomplished and time is worse than wasted. The possibility of handing down the virtues of mother to daughter, and of father to son, is eliminated. If all the qualities of a given “Strain” are to be handed down line breeding must be adhered to in the strictest sense. Inbreeding, however, must be avoided, or disaster will follow.
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.