200 Eggs a Year Per Hen: How to Get Them

200 Eggs a Year per Hen

Written by Edgar L Warren in 1899 this book was reprinted a number of times and this image and extracts are from the 1912 edition.

Of course, much of what’s in the book is outdated now although some information is as valid today as then. I do get a little cross to see people selling pdf copies of the book on ebay etc to unsuspecting new poultry keepers who may follow the advice it contains blindly.

In these days when some strains of hybrid commercial layer will provide 350 eggs per hen per year it’s chastening to remember that 100 years ago 200 eggs was a stiff target!

THE HEREDITY OF THE TWO HUNDRED EGG HEN

When I was a boy a mile in 2 :40 was regarded as a great performance for a trotting horse. There were horses that had trotted under 2 :40, much under, but they were few. I remember it was the custom for us urchins to cry out whenever a man drove by at a slashing gait, “Got it, two-forty !”

I am not an old man yet by any means my wife tells me that I am young but I have lived to see the trotting record come down and down until it has dropped below the two minute mark. A horse that cannot trot in less than 2 :40 is regarded as a good horse for a woman to drive, but out of place on the track.

What has brought the record down and down until men are looking for the two minute horse? Heredity and handling!

A trotting horse now has a pedigree as long as a European monarch. The blood of generations of trotters flows in his veins. It may be the ancestral lines converge in the great Messenger himself.

Heredity and handling! These two things are as necessary for the 200 egg hen as for the two minute horse. Men do not gather grapes from thorns nor figs from thistles. The 200 egg hen must be bred to lay. She must come from an egg-producing strain.

No matter how scientifically a man may feed or how hygienically he may house, he cannot take a flock of hens of any old breed or no breed and get 200 eggs a year apiece from them. It is impossible.

By carefully following the instructions of this book he can largely increase the egg yield of such a flock, but he must not expect to get 200 eggs a year apiece from them. I cannot impress it too strongly upon the reader’s mind that if he expects to get 200 eggs a year apiece from his hens he must start in with a great laying strain.

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