CHAPTER XV. 



SELECTING AND MANAGING THE BREEDING BIEDS. 



The young beginner should avoid buying at large 

 sales which are constantly held in the towns all over 

 the colony. They are nearly all birds bought up cheap 

 by speculators, owing to some fault, and the most bare- 

 faced swindling is practised. I have heard of more 

 than one case of men buying guaranteed breeders, wdiere 

 they have both turned out cocks. And where you 

 see birds advertised as being four and five years old, 

 they are seldom more than two-and-a-half to three- 

 and-a-half years. Yet the prices given at these sales 

 are generally in excess of what the beginner would 

 give if he went to some well-known breeder, whose 

 word he could perfectly rely on, and got a pair of good 

 breeders that would probably have a nest within a 

 month or two. 



The men that should buy at these sales are- men in 



large way, with great experience, but these are just 



the men that are the most chary. Of course, these 



remarks on sales do not apply to farmers' stocks being 



sold off, or when the birds are known. The present 



