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Show PULLETS FOR LAYING STOCK One Poultryman Keeps Hens Through First Laying Year and Then Selects Se-lects Best for Breeding. How many years shall we keep a hen? This question comes up frequently fre-quently for discussion, and the answers an-swers made by practical poultrymen are bewildering to a beginner. One man says that we should depend upon pullets entirely for laying stock. His scheme will be to keep the hens through their first laying season, then select the best of them for breeders and let the rest go. This plan is based on the general theory that a hen lays more eggs in her first year than in any other. Many poultrymen s-sem to believe that most of their hens cannot come back and give a profitable egg record the second year. The system based on this theory demands, de-mands, of course, a vast amount of work in hatching and brooding, m order to keep up a full supply of pullets pul-lets eacti year. On the other hand there are poultrymen who say that we may well keep our hens two, three, or even four years, provided we have the ability to judge the layers properly prop-erly or have some system of weeding out the drones. Naturally if we could keep our hens three years it would mean less work at hatching and brooding, |