CHAPTER XL 



FOWLS FOE LAYERS AXD SITTERS. 



The layers must be of a breed that affords chickens 

 easily reared, for success in the nursery department is 

 all important and they must be at the head of the list 

 of prolific layers of fair sized eggs. None but a non-sit- 

 ting race will answer, for, needing to be broken up fre- 

 quently, sitters make fully double the labor during half 

 of the year; and the feathers must be light, because 

 dark ones show badly when chickens are dressed. 

 There is at present no breed that fulfills all these con- 

 ditions so well as the White Leghorn. It may degener- 

 ate in time, as other races of fowls have done, by being 

 bred for fancy instead of utility, but it possessed at its 

 first importation more vigor than any other non-sitting 

 breed. In breeding poultry, show and utility do not get 

 on well together in the long run. To fanciers unques- 

 tionably belongs the credit of originating improved 

 breeds, but afterwards, in fixing conventional points for 

 the show room, the stock is often ruined in their hands. 



Many breeders of livestock, not poultry alone, but in 

 other departments, do not fully understand the relation 

 between fancy points and useful ones. The confusion 

 in the minds of some writers on this matter is evident. 

 "Why should not a fowl that scores high in shape of 

 comb and tail and in color of legs and plumage, lay just 

 as well as one that scores low in these things ?" some 

 one asks. The answer is that a fancy comb and a fancy 

 plumage in that individual fowl have certainly no direct 



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