The Dollar Hen Part 26

I will leave the last without comment, for the whole thing is a hoax. The Illinois Experiment Station has never owned a chicken.

These "Illinois" experiments were planned and executed in a few minutes of the writer's spare time. The basis of the experiments was a pack of cards containing the individual records of the Maine Experiment Station hens, shuffling the cards and averaging the desired number of records as they come in the pack, made the distinction between the various diets.

Experimental Bias.

Pet ideas consciously or unconsciously mold practice. A bias toward an idea may show itself in the planning and conducting of an experiment, or it may come out in the later interpretation.

An ill.u.s.tration of the first kind is found in the early work of the West Virginia Station (Bulletin 60). With the preconceived notion that hens should have a nitrogenous diet an experiment was planned and conducted as follows:

One lot of hens was fed corn, potatoes, oats and corn meal. A contrasted lot reveled in corn, potatoes, hominy feed, oat meal, corn meal and fresh cut bone. The results were in favor of the latter ration by a doubled egg yield.

To any experienced poultryman the reason is evident. The variety of the diet and the meat food are what made the showing.

About the same time the Ma.s.sachusetts Station planned a similar experiment. The bias was the same, but it took a fairer form. The hens were both given a decent variety of food and some form of meat.

The bulk of the grain was corn in the carbonaceous, and wheat in the nitrogenous ration. The results were in favor of the corn. This astonished the experimenter. He tried it again and again tests came out in favor of corn. At last the old theory was revoked, and the fallacy of wheat being essential to egg production was exploded. If by an irony of fate in the shuffling of the hens, the wheat pen had the first time showed an advantage, the experimenter might have been satisfied and the waste of feeding high priced feed when a better and a cheaper is at hand, might have gone on indefinitely.

Of bias in the interpretation of results all publications are more or less saturated. A reading of the Chapter on Incubation will ill.u.s.trate this. A common error of this kind is the omission of facts necessary to fully explain results. Items of costs are invariably omitted or minimized. Food cost alone is usually mentioned in figuring experimenting station poultry profits, which statement will undoubtedly cause a sad smile to creep over the face of many a "has-been" poultryman.

The writer remembers an incident from his college days which ill.u.s.trates the point in hand. Let it first be remarked that this was on the new lands of the trans-Missouri Country, where manure had no more commercial value than soil, and is freely given to those who will haul it away.

The professor at the blackboard had been figuring up handsome profits on a type of dairying towards which he wits very partial.

The figures showed a goodly profit, but the biggest expense item--that of labor--was omitted. One of the students held up his hand and inquired after the labor bill.

"Oh," said the smiling professor, "The manure will pay for the labor."

When the cla.s.s adjourned, the student remarked: "They say figures won't lie, but a liar will figure."

The third way in which experiments are made worthless is by the introduction of factors other than the one being tested. This may be done by chance, and the conductor not realize the presence of the other factor, or the varying factors may be introduced intentionally under the belief that they are negligible. Of the first case an instance may be cited of the placing of two flocks in a house, one end of which is damper than the other, the accidental introduction into one flock of a contagious disease, or one flock being thrown off feed by an excessive feed of greens, etc., etc. These factors that influence pens of birds greatly add to the error of the law of chance. In fact it amounts to the same thing on a larger scale. For this reason not only are many individuals, but many flocks, many locations, and many years needed to prove the superiority of the contrasted methods.

The criticisms in the following section will amply ill.u.s.trate the case of foreign factors being unwisely introduced into an experiment.

The Egg Breeding Work at the Maine Station.

As is well known the Maine Station was for years considered by all poultrymen to be doing a great and beneficial work in breeding for increased egg production. Up until the fall of 1907, the poultrymen of the country were of the opinion that this work was in every way successful, and a large number of private breeders had taken up the use of trap-nests in an effort to build up the egg production of their fowls.

When early in 1908 Bulletin 157 of the Maine Experiment Station was published, it showed by averages as given in the table on page 202 that the egg yield at the station was for the entire period on the decline. In Bulletin 157, the statement was made that "arithmetical mistakes" and "faulty statistical methods" accounted for the discrepancies between the former publications and the criticised data. The further explanation that "the experiment was a success as an experiment," etc., only appeared to the public mind as a graceful way of explaining what was, to the practical man, an utter failure of the entire work.

The unfortunate death of Professor Gowell, together with the fact that he had equipped a private poultry farm with station stock, added to the confusion, and the result of the bulletin was the precipitation of a general "pow-wow" in which the poultry editors were about equally divided between those who were casting insinuations upon the personnel of the station, and those who decried the whole effort toward improving the egg yield.

After going over the publications of Professor Gowell, visiting the station and meeting the present force, I came to the following conclusions regarding the matter:

Professor Gowell's work is open to severe criticism. Errors have been made in conducting the work at Maine which have made it possible for a mathematical biologist to take the data and seemingly prove that selection, as practiced by Professor Gowell, actually resulted in lowering inherent egg capacity of the strain of Plymouth Rock hens under experimentation. Had Professor Gowell's successor been a practical poultryman, it is my candid opinion that the public would have been given a radically different explanation of the results.

Professor Gowell is the author of the following statement: "The small chicken grower is earnestly urged to use an incubator for hatching." This opinion is not in accord with that of the majority of breeders and the more progressive experiment station workers. The opinion has been expressed by Professor Graham and others, that the particular results at the Maine Station may have been due to the decrease of vitality caused by continued artificial hatching. This view may be wholly without foundation. Nevertheless, as the common type of incubator is under heavy criticism, and it is pretty well proven that chicks so hatched have not the vitality of naturally hatched chicks, surely a series of breeding experiments would carry more weight if the replenishing of the flock had been accomplished by natural means.

For the first few years of the breeding work the house used was the old-fashioned double walled and warmed pattern. The last few years of this work were conducted in curtain front houses. That the cool house is an improvement over the warm house is generally conceded, but there are many poultrymen who are still of the opinion that the warm house will give a larger egg yield, though at a greater expense and less profit.

In the early years of the work the method of feeding was also a time-honored one, and included a warm mash. About the middle of the experimental period Professor Gowell brought out the system of feeding dry mash from hoppers. This custom became a great fad and Professor Gowell and Director Woods have preached it far and wide.

Perhaps it is an improvement, but it is to-day much more popular with novices than with established egg farms. Many old line poultrymen have tried dry mash only to go back to wet mash, by which method the hens can be induced to eat more which is conducive to high egg yields. Whether these changes in housing and feeding have been improvements as claimed by those who introduced them, or whether their popularity may be explained in part at least by the psychology of fads, is a point in question, but certainly the marring of a breeding experiment by introducing radical changes in the factors of production is at best unfortunate.

A much more serious criticism than any of the foregoing is to be found in a change of the size of flocks and amount of floor s.p.a.ce per fowl. I have gone over carefully the published records of Professor Gowell, and the review of Dr. Pearl, and the following table represents, as near as I can determine, these factors for the series of years. In the year 1903 I find no clear statement as to the manner in which the birds were housed, and I may be in error in this case. Otherwise the table gives the facts.

Year Hens in Flock Per Hen Egg Yield 1900 20 8. sq. ft. 136.36 1901 20 8. sq. ft. 143.44 1902 20 8. sq. ft. 155.58 1903 20 8. sq. ft. 135.42 1904 50 4.4 sq. ft. 117.90 1905 50 4.4 sq. ft. 134.07 1906 50 4.4 sq. ft. 140.14 1907 50 4.4 sq. ft. 113.24

Certainly this oversight is a serious one, and one especially remarkable considering the fact that the comparison of different size flocks formed a prominent part of the Maine Station work during the last three years of the breeding test. The results of the work at the Maine Station on testing flock size, conducted without relation to the breeding work, gave the following results:

No. of Hens Sq. ft. per Hen Egg Yield 150 3.2 111.68 100 4.8 123.21 50 4.8 129.69

No comparisons of 50 and 20 bird flocks in the same year are available, but by extending the comparisons of the 50, 100 and 150 flocks into the 20 flock size, we can get some idea of the error that has been here introduced. The result of the Australian egg laying contest in which the flocks were composed of six hens, shows a yield of about one and one-half times as heavy as the Maine records, which certainly seems to substantiate the ideas here brought out.

It is a well established fact in poultry circles that many men who succeed with a few hundred hens, fail when the number is increased to as many thousands. When the breeding experiments under discussion were started, Professor Gowell had under his supervision about three hundred hens. When the work was closed the experiment station plant had been increased to four or five times its capacity, and Professor Gowell had a large private poultry plant of his own in addition.

It is interesting to note in this connection that the last four years of the records are explained by Professor Gowell as being low, due to various "accidents" (?) It is unreasonable to suppose the true explanation of these "accidents" would be found in connection with the increased responsibility and size of the plant.

The breeding stock sent out by Professor Gowell has given general satisfaction, and was found by Professor Graham of the Ontario Station, as well as by a number of private individuals, to be of superior laying quality to that of the average Barred Rock.

Clearly there is only one way to prove whether Professor Gowell's work has been a wasted effort, and that is for flocks of his strain to be tested at other experiment stations against birds of miscellaneous origin.

That much has been lost to the poultrymen of the country by the recent upheaval at the Maine Station, I believe to be the case, but that does not mean that the men now in charge will not in the future be of great value to the poultry interests. They are, however, in the cla.s.s of pure scientists rather than applied scientists, but if let alone they will dig out something sooner or later which they or others can apply to the benefit of the industry.

Upon the whole, I think that the present case of the trap-nest method of increasing egg production stands very much as it is has always stood, being a commendable thing for small breeders who could afford the time, but not practical in a large way, except at experiment stations. On a large commercial scale the system of selecting sires by the collective work of his first year's offspring would probably get the quickest results.

The best use of the funds of the people in the promotion of agricultural industries is in the permanent endors.e.m.e.nt on the one hand of a few high grade research stations where the deeper theories may be worked out, and on the other the teaching of such good principles and practices as are already known.

The greatest opportunity for Government effort lies in the development demonstration farm work in poultry Just as it is doing with the corn and cotton in the South.

CHAPTER XVI

POULTRY ON THE GENERAL FARM

This chapter will be devoted to specific directions for the profitable keeping of chickens on the typical American farm. By typical American farm I mean the farm west of Ohio, north of Tennessee and east of Colorado. Farms outside this section present different problems. In the region mentioned about three-quarters of the American poultry and egg crop is produced, and in this section poultry keeping is more profitable when conducted as a part of general farm operations than as an exclusive business.

There is no reason why a farmer should not be a poultry fancier if he desires, but in that case his special interest in his chickens would throw him out of the cla.s.s we are at present considering.

Likewise, I do not doubt that in many instances where the farmer or members of his family took special interest in poultry work, it would be profitable to increase the size of operations beyond those herein advised, using incubators and keeping Leghorns. Of these exceptions the farmer himself must judge. The rules I lay down are for those farmers who wish to keep chickens for profit, but do not care to devote any larger share of their time and study to them than they do to the cows, hogs, orchard or garden.

The advice herein given in this chapter will differ from much of the advice given to farmers by poultry writers. The average poultry editor is afraid to give specific advice concerning breeds, incubators, etc., because he fears to offend his advertisers. The reader, left to judge for himself, is liable to pick out some fancy impractical variety or method.

Best Breeds for the Farm.

Keep only one variety of chickens. Do not bother with other varieties of poultry unless it is turkeys. Whether it will pay to raise turkeys will depend upon your success with the little turks, and on the freedom of the community from the disease called Black-head.