The Prolific Hen.

Kaipara and Waitemata Echo, 4 December 1914, Page 3

The Prolific Hen.

Though chickens are nowadays always hatched from eggs, nobody has ever beea able to tell us whether the first egg came before the first hen, or whether it was the other way about. Wo arc, however, quite certain of this, that the first breed of fowls which made its appearance in the. far-away past would have cut a. sorry figure in the matter of egg-laying compared with their i descendants of the present day. A friend of the writer had a Wyandotte pullet that laid 113 eggs in twelve months. Prom halt" of. these eggs, laid in the spring- and early summer, he hatched and reared 50 pullets, which have- laid an average of 170 each during the past year. Now', assuming that this year he obtains only 50 pullets from each 17U eggs, and that each pullet lays only 170 eggs in the first year, that' will mean a total of 425,000 e-M'gs. If the same process is repeated during the fourth year, there will then be a stock of 125,000 pullets, and at the end of their first year's laying they will have yielded a total of 21,250,000 eggs !