HYBRID HENS BETTER LAYERS

Taupo Times, Volume I, Issue 28, 23 July 1952, Page 2

HYBRID HENS BETTER LAYERS

CLAIMS BY AMERICAN FARMERS Hyhrid hens, the latest development in the continuing effort to improve poultry breeds, may boost egg output even higher in the UmV Stat.es, reports the "Country Gentleman," a. nationally distributed farm magazine published in the United States. In the Midwest corn belt States, where about half the Nation's laying hens are raised, 406 farmers carried out %tests in which hybrid hens are raised, tests in which hybrid hens were kept on one side of the henhouse, and selected hafrchery pullets on the other side. (Hybrid hens laid an average of 192 eggs a year each compared with 152 for standard pullets. In 1951 the Nation's farmers purchased about 34,000,000 hybrid chicks. This year more than 100,000 farmers will buy an estimated 42,000,000 hybrids. A saies exerutive who helped promote the distribution of hybrid chickens, predicts that in five years 15 percent of all U.S. laying hens will. be hybrids and that these 135,000,000 chickens can increase farm income »bv $65,000,000. In the long, exacting, and expensive process of developing hybrid chickens, breeders select purebred birds with desirable qualities such as high egg production and resistance to disease, and fix these qualities with imbreeding. ■ Inbred nhickens are then crossed to get hybrids. Hybrids vary in type, size and laying ability, ahd only the best varieties are offered for sale to farmers.