CHAPTER Il 
SELECTION OF BREEDING STOCK 
\ GOOD start is everything in a race or a battle, 
even so in the breeding of Roller Canaries. 
There are two or three points we would impress 
most forcibly upon our readers. The first is to start 
with birds of one strain, the second to have none but 
thoroughly healthy birds, and the third is to select the 
breeding stock and let it be in the breeding room as 
soon after the finish of the moult in the autumn as it 
is possible. 
The reasons why? The man who has a successful 
strain of birds has made it by continued and persistent 
selection over many years, so that you are, in buying 
stock from such a man, buying the results of his skill 
and experience. When birds of varied strains are mated 
together the result is never, or hardly ever, satisfactory, 
because the blood does not hit. Then health. Birds 
that are not healthy are useless as breeders as they pro- 
duce nothing but weak, delicate progeny that is of little 
use. Thirdly, when birds are placed in the room in 
which they are to be mated in the autumn and live in it 
all through the winter they become accustomed to their 
surroundings, their food, and their attendants, and the 
results are infinitely better than when they are only 
introduced to the breeding room just previous to being 
mated up. This applies more particularly to hens than 
cocks. 
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