No. 6. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 303 



egg is a better keeping egg? I cannot account for it by anything 

 else except that a great many egg producers in the western states 

 take the cockerels away from the hens. 



PKOF. KICE: Well, I want to say a word on that, because 

 there is a great deal involved. I realize fully the importance of 

 keeping the males away from the hens during the liot weather 

 season; but I am not in sympathy, most decidedly not in sympathy 

 with the slogan unqualified to "Swat the rooster," that is heralded 

 all over the South, although undoubtedly it is more important for 

 them than for us, beenuse we have less length of hot weather sea- 

 son than they have. They mean all right in trying to keep the 

 males away from the hens, that should be done even in this State, 

 and New York Stnte or anywhere; but the slogan of "Swat the 

 rooster" results in the killing of thousands arid hundreds of thousands 

 of roosters all over the country that should not be killed and is defeat- 

 ing one of the most important ends of good breeding. They are forcing 

 the breeders to depend upon the young and frequently immature males 

 for all of their mating and they are killing all the fine males that 

 prove to be desirable at the end of that first season, or the second 

 season. How many of our males that have stood all of the tests 

 of the most rigid selection as cockerels, break down in the second 

 year? And then how many fall by the wayside in the third and 

 fourth years? When you can find an individual that has stood up 

 through all these breeding seasons and still has virility and vitality, 

 that bird is a bird in a thousand, and we cannot afford to sacrifice 

 him. What would become of the beef or the dairy and horse in- 

 terests of this country if they depended upon yearlings or two year 

 olds for breeders every year? The principle is dead wrong to kill 

 off the males each year. We must keep our best males just as 

 long as they retain their vitality. We must find a way to take care 

 of them during the breeding season and after the breeding season 

 so they will not suffer in vitality. 



A Member: Do you use that male on his own flock the following 

 year, for two or three years? 



PROF. RICE: I think that question has never been very well 

 worked out, as to how long it is safe to breed the same sire upon 

 his own off spring, yet my opinion is that the tendency of close in-breed- 

 ing has the effect of reducing longevity bv killing off the males that 

 ought to be kept on their farms for breeding for a period of 

 years. I tell you, friends, when you get a male that is good enouirh 

 to treed from, he is one in a hundred perhaps, one in five thousand. 

 Tf you never have gone through the experience of reducing 100 males 

 by the rigid process of elimination of the poorest down to the two 

 or three best, you have never gotten your full education. 



A Member: Isn't it a fact that the male you describe is no longer a 

 rooster, but that he is a breeding animal ? 



PROF. RICE: Yes sir. He is a breedins: animal, but he is also 

 a rooster. If they could only make the distinction between good 

 roosters and poor roosters it would be all right. I am not saying 

 this in criticism, Mr. Wittman, I am sajnng though, that the way in 



