The SpokeSman • WedneSday, January 5, 2022 P5
OFFBEAT OREGON
Part II: It’s all about the
genetics when it comes to eggs
BY FINN J.D. JOHN
For The Spokesman
Editor’s note: Part II of the
unusual story of Oregon Agri-
cultural College Professor James
Dryden’s claim that common
poultry can lay more eggs than
purbreds.
Oregon’s agricultural com-
munity, was noticeably unim-
pressed by these arguments
against Professor Dryden’s
claims. Obviously, farmers
weren’t keeping chickens for
ornamental reasons. If OAC
had taken “Judge” Collier’s ad-
vice and quit telling farmers
how to increase egg yields in
favor of some platitudes about
quality chicken coops and sani-
tation practices, there probably
would have been a revolt.
Over the next few years,
Dryden and his college moved
from win to win. By 1911 it
was clear that he was right
about genetics and egg-lay-
ing. In December two of his
chickens came within 9 per-
cent of the world record, which
at the time was 282 eggs in 12
months, held by an Ontario
Agricultural College chicken.
Dryden’s Chicken No. A-122, a
purebred barred rock, laid 259,
and Chicken A-61, a barred
rock-white leghorn cross, laid
257.
The next year Dryden & Co.
fixed up a rail car as a mobile
poultry demonstration and
toured the state with it, letting
everyone see the state’s cham-
pion chicken alongside an ap-
parently identical barred rock
that laid only 44 eggs in the
time A-122 laid 257. Dryden’s
point was that if farmers don’t
know each hen’s individual
output, they can’t make good
decisions about which chickens
to continue feeding and which
to turn into chicken soup, and
the low-output layers will offset
the high-output layers.
“Demonstration is a Revela-
tion,” the Capital Journal wrote
in a long sub-headline about
the display. “Two Hens Look-
ing Just Alike Show Different
Records — One is a Home-
body and Produces 240 Eggs,
While Her Flirtatious Sister
Devotes Time to Lunches, Sup-
pers, Late Dinners and Such
and Gives Up 44.”
“The poorer layer had a
saucy, wear-your-hat-on-the-
back-of-your-head sort of look
and somehow reminded one
of Mrs. Jack Cudahy,” the re-
porter wrote, in a reference to a
famously flirty Kansas City so-
ciety woman whose millionaire
husband had just attempted to
murder one of her male friends
in a jealous rage.
“Another of the same breed,
but evidently with equal-suf-
frage ideas about ovipar-
ity, deposited only six of the
Calendar
Continued from P1
SATURDAY 1/8
JuJu Eyeball: The Beatles cover band
will perform; 7-9 p.m.; $10; General
duffy’s Watering hole, 404 SW Forest
ave., Bend; facebook.com/Generalduffys
or 541-527-4345.
SUNDAY 1/9
Writers Working — Critique Groups
Workshop: Bring two pages or two
poems to share with a group for critique;
1-3 p.m.; free; deschutes public Library,
online; deschuteslibrary.org or 541-312-
1063.
MONDAY 1/10
Open Mic: First timers to pros, everyone’s
welcome to sing up for open mic; 5:30-
7:30 p.m.; free; General duffy’s Watering
hole, 404 SW Forest ave., redmond;
generalduffys.com or 541-527-4345.
Candle Making Workshop: In this
SOLUTION
Sudoku on Page 2
“Dryden’s point was that if
farmers don’t know each
hen’s individual output, they
can’t make good decisions
about which chickens to
continue feeding and which
to turn into chicken soup.”
shell-covered bird seeds in 12
months.”
The following year, Dryden
and his team finally clinched
the world record, wringing
291 two-ounce eggs out of a
chicken named C-543 in the
course of the year that ended
on Oct. 15, 1913. In the mean-
time, chicken C-521 (Lady
MacDuff) was at 279 eggs and
counting, with 30 more days in
her 12 months; barring some
kind of freak incident, the col-
lege was about to break both
C-543’s record and the 300-egg
barrier.
This, of course, happened,
right on schedule in early No-
vember.
Newspapers around the state
and beyond metaphorically
threw their hats in the air.
“OREGON’S GREAT RE-
CORD-MAKING HEN
ONLY ONE OF FLOCK,” The
Sunday Oregonian shouted
above a photo spread cover-
ing most of Page Two. And,
later, “DEVELOPMENT OF
BREED OF HENS WITH
SPECIAL ABILITY TO
PRODUCE EGGS DRAWS
WORLD’S ATTENTION TO
OREGON.”
“HEN C-543 WORTH
HER WEIGHT IN GOLD:
Oregon Chicken is World
Beater,” the Portland Jour-
nal proclaimed, following up
with a glowing comment on
the editorial page headlined
“THE CORVALLIS WON-
DER.”
Well … most of the news-
papers did. At least one did
not.
At the Cottage Grove
Leader, the coverage of
Dryden’s triumph was almost
whiplash-inducing. On the
front page, reasonably prom-
inently placed, was an article
headlined “OREGON HEN
MAKES WORLD MARK.”
It was a short but straight-
forward account of C-543’s
feat. But in the same issue,
on the editorial page, un-
der a headline reading “Pure
Breeds vs. Mongrels,” editor
W.C. Conner really cuts loose.
And it’s this article that led
Dryden to actually complain
to the Leader two weeks later,
prompting the newspaper’s call
for his resignation.
The fascinating thing about
this particular moment in
the chicken battle is, up to
this point it had not been en-
tirely clear why the Leader
was so intransigently op-
posed to Dryden’s efforts to
improve chickens’ egg-laying
qualities. It had quoted and
supported poultry breeders,
chicken-show judges, and
other interested parties whose
business models were threat-
ened by the new attitude, and
it stuck by them even when
their position was obviously
contrary to the best interests of
most ordinary chicken keep-
ers. Why?
Because, as it turned out,
chicken C-521 was a cross-
breed, and Conner was a eu-
genics fanatic, and — well, let’s
let him explain: (Bear with me
here, Conner’s editorial writing
style was turgid and soporific
even by 1910s standards.)
“The Leader would refrain
from unjust criticism of any
state educational institution or
its management or the work of
any department thereof,” the
editorial begins, “but it seems
to us that the highest ideals
should be fostered in these in-
stitutions and all standards of
excellence upheld and main-
tained. And while this object
may generally prevail at these
educational institutions, we are
unable to understand wherein
the management of the poul-
try department at OAC expect
to better or advance the great
poultry industry of the country
by perpetually idealizing and
exploiting mongrel strains and
breeds of chickens, when per-
fection in the various standard
bred fowls is what every prom-
inent and successful breeder in
the country is striving for.”
The editorial goes on to
revisit “Judge” Collier’s com-
ments from three years pre-
viously, ranting tediously that
chicken race-mixing is “not
supported by national or in-
ternational contests and the
poultry records, nor by facts,
figures, or Nature’s laws.”
“The fact is,” the editorial
continues, a few paragraphs
later, “it would be just as rea-
sonable to advocate the pro-
duction of superior dairy herds
by a conglomeration of cattle
breeds, or superior horses by a
mixture of Clyde, Belgian and
Percheron, and so on down
the line. This would mean an
inevitable return in time to the
razor-back hog and the inferior
and mongrel breeds found a
few decades ago in their native
state before they were bred up
to the present excellent stan-
dards by man.”
And then, finally, Conner
makes his true objection to
cross-bred chickens plain: He
sees it as a form of miscegena-
tion:
“Of course, you might im-
workshop participants will learn how
to make four clean-burning, scented
candles.; 6-8 p.m.; free; oSu extension
Service, 498 Se Lynn Blvd., prineville;
extension.oregonstate.edu or 541-447-
6228.
SafetyNet Training with KIDS Center:
develop tools to manage online lives for
both adults and children; 5:30-7 p.m.;
free registration is required; deschutes
public Library, online; deschuteslibrary.
org or 541-617-7050.
TUESDAY 1/11
Writers Writing — Quiet Writing Time:
enjoy the focus of a quiet space with the
benefit of others’ company; 10:30 a.m.-
12:30 p.m.; free; redmond public Library,
827 SW deschutes ave., redmond;
deschuteslibrary.org or 541-312-1050.
Central Oregon Comedy Scene
presents Standup Comedy: John
Coke (new york), Cody michael (local)
and Cody parr (mcminnville) will all
be showing off their standup comedy
talent; 7:30-10 p.m.; $15 online, $20 at
door; General duffy’s Watering hole, 404
SW Forest ave., Bend; facebook.com/
Generalduffys or 541-527-4345.
prove the characteristics and
the qualifications of the Chi-
nese or Africans by the in-
fusion of the white race,” he
writes, “but it would be mighty
hard on the Caucasians.”
Ouch. At least he didn’t use
racial slurs.
Whether this exhibition of
racism and enthusiasm for eu-
genics played as awkwardly in
1913 as it does today is very
doubtful; such ideas were al-
most mainstream back then.
But, it has to have been pretty
obvious to everyone reading
the Leader that its editor had
become obsessed and was
no longer talking any kind of
sense.
The fancy-chicken breed-
ers and county-fair judges
might have been going along
with him, for business reasons;
but nearly every other reader
must have thought the guy
had flipped his wig. The local
college had set a new world re-
cord and set the entire country
talking about Oregon chickens,
and all that seemed to matter
to the Cottage Grove Leader
was the purity of the chickens’
bloodstock?
In any case, as far as I have
been able to learn, the Leader
retreated from the field after
this engagement. Eighteen
months later, editor Conner
sold the paper to W.H. Tyrrell,
a newspaperman from Iowa;
and two months after that, Tyr-
rell, having found that Conner
had misrepresented the busi-
ness’s balance sheets, merged
the paper into the rival Cottage
Grove Sentinel. The last issue
of the Leader was published in
August of 1915.
As for Dryden, in 1916 his
book, Poultry Breeding and
Management, was published to
enormous acclaim. It became
the most important chick-
en-farming textbook of the in-
ter-war period. OSU’s poultry
building, a classic brick struc-
ture built in 1927, was named
Dryden Hall to honor him.
Today, thanks largely to
Dryden’s work, the average
egg-breed hen lays 200 to 250
eggs a year. The world record
for egg laying is currently held
by an Australian chicken,
which in 1979 laid 371 eggs in
365 days.
(Sources: “Corvallis chicken
sets 1913 world record,” an ar-
ticle by Kristine Deacon posted
July 1, 2021, on the Oregon
State Archives Facebook page;
Poultry Breeding and Manage-
ment, a book by James Dryden
published in 1916 and 1920 by
Orange Judd Co.; archives of
Cottage Grove Leader, Cottage
Grove Sentinel, Portland Morn-
ing Oregonian, Oregon Journal,
Medford Mail Tribune, and
Capitol Journal, 1908-1915)
Read and
recycle
Jeffrey Duane McBride
of Terrebonne
August 25, 1955 - Decem-
ber 22, 2021
Arrangements: Autumn
Funerals - Redmond
541-504-9485
autumnfunerals.com
Services: Memorial to be
held summer of 2022.
Contributions may be
made to: Charity of one’s
choice
Ryan Gilbert Watkins
of Redmond
December 14, 1971 - De-
cember 28, 2021
Arrangements: For Com-
plete Obituary go to spring-
erandson.com
Services: No Services
Contributions may be
made to: ASPCA
OBITUARY
DEADLINE
Call to ask about
our deadlines
541-385-5809
OBITUARY POLICY
death notices are free and will be run for one day, but specific
guidelines must be followed. Local obituaries are paid advertise-
ments submitted by families or funeral homes. They may be sub-
mitted by phone, mail, email or fax. The Spokesman reserves the
right to edit all submissions. When submitting, please include your
name, address and contact number. For deadlines or other informa-
tion, call 541-617-7865.
email: classified@redmondspokesman.com
Fax: 541-598-3150
mail: obituaries, p.o. Box 6020, Bend, or 97708
SOLUTION
Crossword on Page 2