| Show 0 ulrey GOOD MALES BRING HIGH LAYING HENS use progeny testing plan to pick best sires prepared Pr prel by the united states department of agriculture AErl Agri cultura service A good male is ten times as important as a good hen in building up a flock of poultry for tills this reason progeny testing a method which enables ft a poultry breeder to identify the superior males in his hock flock is a necessity to progress in poultry breeding says dr M A jull in charge of poultry investigations for the united states department part ment of agriculture too much significance has been attached to phenomenal records in egg laying contests according to doctor jull who bases his statement on the results of a recent experiment with white le leghorns Leg horns and rhode island reds at the beltsville research center of the department at beltsville md lid high production records in the ancestry of hens used in a breeding flock are of course desirable but the experiment peri ment shows that such records on only one side of the ancestry are not sufficient assurance of high producing pullets on the other hand three generations erat ions lons of good egg production records do give soine assurance of good records of the pullets A hen that produces good laying pullets by one sire may produce pullets with much lower averages when mated to another sire the next year this indicates that a hens value as a breeder Is not always shown by the average egg production of her daughters but depends also on the mating involved the ability to select superior breeding males Is of great importance because a sires influence on a flock Is at least ten times as great as that of a hen as one sire is usually mated to ten or more hens the index of greatest value in determining a sires breeding worth was found to be the average egg production of all of his daughters |
