308 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



stop a moment, you will remember that your males are a good deal 

 lighter in color than your females and there are very few that 

 have the markings of these particular chickens. You will notice 

 a bluish cast, the feathers are pure black and white but are so 

 distributed that the effect is a bluish pink. There has been end- 

 less time, patience and money spent in developing these fancy 

 points. We have men in America who are known the world over, 

 our Hawkins' and our Thompson and our Bradley and Wells, men 

 whose names practically everybody in the room has heard, that have 

 spent their lifetime in developing this Barred Plymouth Rock and 

 bringing out these fine lines, and they go down to Madison Square 

 Garden and fight the old battle over year by year as to supremacy, 

 to see who can bring birds with the most parallel bars. Those bars 

 on those feathers had to be parallel, straight across, so that we can 

 have these ringlet effects. Those who have not been poultry fanciers 

 have no idea what is required along tlie breeding line to bring 

 about something like this. 



We want to give due credit to the men who have been able, as a 

 result of spending a lifetime of the keenest sort of work to be 

 able to show this sort of chicken. It is not easy. I have knocked 

 around the show rooms pretty nearly all my life; I remember the 

 very first chicken I showed, when I was onh^ a boy of ten, but 

 it was a mighty fine chicken, I thouglit. I paid a dollar to enter 

 it in the poultry show, my own dollar too, and the judge came 

 along and disqualified it; I didn't even have a run for my money, 

 and when I was 17 somebody thought I knew enough about chickens 

 to judge my first poultry shows and he went to the president of 

 our county fair and got me a job and I appeared and introduced 

 mj^self to the secretary and he asked me to repeat what I'd say; 

 he was polite enough not to say anything more, but when I got 

 out into the hall one of the men, when told I was to judge chickens, 

 said, "That fellow is only a kid," and since that I have heard more 

 than once that I don't know anything at all about chickens and 

 I guess it is true, but T have been through that hard knock school 

 of experience in judging poultry and I know what it is to get 

 birds of this type. 



Understand when men are breeding chickens, to get this type, 

 they may have it on paper or they may tell it by word of mouth 

 that this sort of chicken laj^s eggs, but they really don't care 

 whether a hen like that lays one egg or a hundred, and they will 

 breed her Avhether she does or not, and they will use the progeny 

 from that sort of lien again and again, and it would be foolish 

 if thev didn't do it. A Barred Plymouth Bock like these, 1 have 

 seen sold for .f 100, 1200, $500 and $800, and if a chicken like that is 

 worth 1800 and lays only 8 or 9 eggs a year, her eggs are worth 

 some money. But I am not quarreling with those fellows who 

 claim that that is the sort of chicken the farmers and utility poultry 

 men should have and sell their eggs from this sort of chicken to 

 llie farmer and men Avho try to make a living out of their chickens. 

 Within a month 1 was Avith a city man whose health has broken 

 down and he bought a Pennsylvania farm nine years ago. The 

 girls are off at work, but the boy is 16 and is going to school. 

 The father is trying to pay the mortgage and the mother and the 

 boy are trying to help with chickens. Four years ago they bought 

 some chickens from one of these chicken fanciers, these purely fancy 



