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Show MM WATCH GOOD LAYER TO PICK BEST EGGS Shape of Body and Head Is Not Reliable Guide. Science blasted a persistent myth of the American barnyard when Department De-partment of Agriculture investigators investiga-tors announced that there Is no-mathematical no-mathematical relationship between the shape of a hen's egg and her potential egg production. Months of delicate measuring, weighing, counting, tabulating and cross-indexing were required to demonstrate the scientific truth that "neither the shape of a hen's body nor the shape of her head bears any relationship to her egg production. "Apparently," the scientific Inquiry In-quiry concluded, "a hen's ability to lay depends upon egg-laying ancestry." ances-try." To gather the information upon which these general conclusions were based, the department's Investigators Inves-tigators devised a trap nest. Under the general direction of J. P. Quinn, a poultry specialist in the bureau of animal industry, the government test was checked on two widely divergent di-vergent types of chickens. "Investigators measured the live birds, the dressed carcasses, and the bones of about 400 trapnested White Leghorn and Rhode Island Red hens," the report says. "They could find no relationship between egg production or egg size and the shape of the hen's body. They conclude con-clude that the shape of the body, as indicated by length of keel and the width and depth of the body, have been much overemphasized in culling practices. Similarly, the shape of the head, often regarded as an indicator of laying capacity, was not a safe guide. Head and skull measurements revealed no factorlength, fac-torlength, breadth, or depth of skull associated with high capacity for egg production. The weight of the brains was not a criterion as to the number, total weight, or average weight of the eggs the bird had laid." The surest way to pick out good producers, the bulletin suggests, is by the empirical method that is, by watching the suspected good layers lay-ers and counting their eggs. |