332 Bureau of Farmers' Institutes. 



How to Select and Manage Matings. 



The real art of production begins with mating the parent birds, 

 and right here is where the majority of our mistakes are made 

 and our work destroyed. We may all he able to select our best 

 birds and to know beyond the shadow of a doubt that we have 

 our best pair mated; but this may not be a proper mating, and 

 most usually is not. Even our very best may not be fit to unite 

 as producers of better than themselves; for though lacking in 

 only trivial respect, they may both lack in exactly the same re- 

 spect, tending thereby to accentuate the defect in their progeny. 

 In mating, our aim is invariably to produce better than we have, 

 and unless we manage our matings so as to obtain our wish we 

 are liable to severe disappointment. With all fancy stock the 

 aim is naturally to move ahead and to improve what we have as 

 rapidly as possible. Take away that aim and the fancy would 

 die from want of a sufficient motive to keep it alive. 



"No one can positively be told how to mate for results; it is a 

 problem which each must solve for himself and in the considera- 

 tion of which so many different factors are closely entwined that 

 it becomes a most complex problem, the solution of which must 

 remain a matter of the future, proved by experience, not by the- 

 ory. The most prominent factor is the full and complete knowl- 

 edge of the blood lines at hand; in other words, of the material 

 available for the work which it is desired to accomplish. No one 

 who trusts to chance matings can hope to keep up with advanced 

 breeders who keep close records of their work and who through 

 a system of record-keeping are enabled to tell the exact value as a 

 breeder of every one of their birds. Guided by the information 

 gathered in years of scientific record-keeping, as well as breeding, 

 they know just where to turn when in need of any special trait, 

 and, leaving nothing to chance, their success is reasonably assured. 



The one best or most appropriate male can form one-half the 

 pair-mating for five hens. The proper appliances or management 

 can fully assure us, beyond all cavil, as to the origin of the indi- 

 vidual egg, which can be numbered, and the chick produced from 

 same so plainly marked between the toes as to be always readily 

 selected as the result of any former mating. Many make use of 

 small yards and houses, all which are so joined as to make it 

 quite convenient to shift the male from one pair of mating to 

 another. Others use trap nests; while others have separate nest 

 boxes, from which the hens may be taught to select one. This 



