No. 6. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICUI/TURE. 285 



SO long as you have it ou the farm. Here is another (Fig. 4 B). 

 There you see that same tendency to narrow chest, tucked up abdo- 

 men, and in the course of two weeks you see the same type of 

 chickens. Notice that these three high vitality chickens (Fig. 5), with 

 full developed bodies, strong wing pads, showing good feathering, with 

 abundant down lying close to the head, and eyes, full and expressive; 

 heavy curved beak; chickens that are upright, lively and peart. 

 In Fig. 5 B are three chickens of the same age, with dropping wings. 

 The wings of the weak chicks are not as large as those of the stronger 

 chicks, but they look larger at first because the body of the weak 

 chickens are so small. The bodies failed to grow. The attitude of 

 the chicken indicates quite accurately its vitality. Here in Fig. 6 

 you will find four chickens of the same age, Khode Island Beds, all 

 hatched in the same incubator, brooded in the same brooder, fed ori 

 the same rations, and yet the largest chicken will weigh at least five 

 times as much as the smallest chicken and will weigh perhaps a 

 third more than the other two. 



It is puiely of inheritance or acquired weakness or both. These 

 chickens marked A were born strong; the ones marked B were either 

 born lacking vitality or acquired the weakness. They never can wholly 

 overcome it. Sometimes they overcome it in a measure, but as a rule 

 they are never chickens that could be kept on a farm beyond the 

 broiler age with any degree of profit. The thing to do always in breed- 

 ing up our stock is to select rigidly up to the time that we mate up our 

 breeding pens, then select the eggs the right size and shape and with 

 good strong shells, then select the strong germs. We have run experi- 

 ments by which we could compare the strength of the germs every 

 seven days and picked out those that were large and strong and vigor- 

 ous and those that had low heart beats and small development. We 

 carried them through to the hatching time and found a wonderful 

 ditt'erence in the hatching power and strength of the chickens deter- 

 mined entirely two weeks before they were hatched just by the way the 

 embryo developed. Whenever we see a low vitality chick at 

 hatching time the thing to do is 'o kill it and at any time when they 

 look listless at any age^ dispose of them. After they reach an age of 

 several weeks, frequently we can mark the weak ones with red paint 

 and keep them until they are about one pound or more in weight and 

 then sell them to make sure they do not get mixed up with the 

 balance of the flock. 



Here in Fig. 7 is the evidence of what can be accomplished by mere 

 selection. There is a flock of pullets marked strong that were hatched 

 from a flock of hens that had been selected for their strong vitality 

 from a common lot. Here are pullets marked weak that are of the 

 same age as these marked strong. They were hatched from eggs laid 

 by hens that were of less vigorous vitality. Now the mothers of both 

 of these flocks of pullets had all run together all summer long in 

 the corn field and were simply picked out in November. The stronger 

 ones were put in a pen and the weaker were put in another pen and 

 the record kept of egg production, food consumed and hatching power, 

 etc. The following fall, at the time this picture was taken, these 

 pullets from the high vitality parents were laying; these from low 

 vitality parents did not begin to lay for five to six weeks after the 

 others; the former weighed half a pound apiece more at the time they 

 were five months old than did the latter. That is a pretty Vig dif- 



