CHAPTER XXIII. 



THEORY AND PRACTICE. 



SYSTEMATIC CROSS BREEDING. 



The continual advocacy of fancy poultry for common 

 farm use is an error. The poultry papers, and most 

 agricultural papers, advise the breeding of certain pure 

 breeds, as if they possessed merits far superior to the 

 barn-door fowls and common poultry. This is a mis- 

 take. No one advocates the use of thoroughbred horses, 

 well-bred trotters, pure Percherons or Clydes, pure-bred 

 pigs, or sheep, or cattle, to the exclusion of common 

 ones, but farmers are urged to improve their common 

 stock by breeding up, by gradually introducing better 

 blood and breeding, with some definite aim. Thus, our 

 common mixed sheep, which are regular breeders, good 

 mothers, and have plenty of milk, are crossed with pure 

 rams of one of the established breeds. If size is wanted, 

 with long wool, the Cots wold is perhaps employed; if the 

 wool is to be improved in fineness without so much 

 reference to the mutton, one of the Merino breeds will 

 be selected; while if early lambs of fine quality are de- 

 sired, one of the Down breeds is chosen by the raiser. 

 This is precisely the course which should be followed by 

 farmers in poultry-raising. The advantage of grading 

 up common poultry is, however, not so profitable in 

 most cases as cross breeding. This is, properly, the in- 

 terbreeding of two pure varieties. We have, however, 

 usually no pure breed of fowls upon the farm, and of 

 course wish to utilize those which we have. Therefore 

 the first thing to do is to grade up the flock. After two 

 or three years, when they have the looks and qualities 

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