What Happens When a Hen Breaks an Egg

Taranaki Daily News, 30 September 1940, Page 17 (Supplement)

What Happens When a Hen Breaks an Egg

When hens are struggling for a place in which to lay and an egg gets broken, does it make a messy patch in your nesting boxes? It uoed to with a North Taranaki farmer, but since he put on his considering cap the only regret occasioned by the accidental smashing of an egg is that represented by its lost marketable value. No longer does he examine his boxes to remove sticky and unpleasant straw, neither has he bothered to scheme out how he can find room for extra boxes. In fact, to-day h- has no laying boxes at all. He removed them en bloc and, in their place, stretched a length of chicken netting supported at intervals by a bracket. Along the netting he scattered loose dry straw and left the rest to his hens. He has so many that they still crowd the laying shelf and eggs are still occasionally broken by gropin" feet, but the straw does not become messy, and the feathers of the "fowl do not bicome bedraggled by sticky yoke. When broken the egg is resting on the netting and all the liquid drains to the ground through the mesh. Only an odd straw or two in the immediate vicinity is effected and as it quickly dries no ill-effects are noticeable. Of course, it will long since have been realised that the equipment of the farmer whose methods are under discussion does not run to individual nests with r. odern egg traps. He is just a farmer who felt it incumbent upon him to buy a number of additional hins in order that the breakfast tables of Britain might not be reduced to bacon alona.