15C AMERICAN SQUAB CULTURE 



If you should pick out your best birds aud put them by them- 

 selves, you would reduce the average quality of yo\u' pens; but, 

 on the contrary, if you eliminate your poorest and infeiior birds, 

 you improve the average quality of your flock, 



I have tried out a plan of segregating my most perfect birds 

 into a single pen and saving their offspring to improve my 

 breeding stock. This, in a way, will work fairly well, but as 

 all the offspring of all good looking pairs are not up to the 

 standard of their parents, one would be making slow progress 

 in saving such birds for breeding purposes, even though they 

 come from birds of apparent quality. I have noticed many 

 people practice this method, and invariably they save from their 

 best pens youngsters for breeding purposes which are far inferior 

 to the best youngsters i)roduced in otlier pens. 



One should go through his plant once or twice a week spotting 

 birds to be taken out, when by doing so no eggs or yovuig Will 

 be lost. For instance, we see a small, under-average cock in 

 pen No. 10. We investigate and find that he is also a slow- 

 breeder or that his squabs are not large and fat as a iiil<\ We 

 then decide to take him and his mate out. We find, ho\\ever, 

 that they have eggs or young ones, so we make a calculation 

 as to the time they can be removed and on tliat date we finish 

 the work started a week or even a month before. The mate, if 

 a good average bii'd, is lemated with a good cock and put back 

 to work. All culled out birds can be used for soup, sold on the 

 market or jobbed off in a lot to some one who is not particular 

 about quality. In short, I advise the ini|)rovement of quality 

 by methods of elimination lather than by special selections. 



SELECTION OF YOUNGSTERS FOR BREEDING 

 PURPOSES 



Like the rearing and breeding of cattle, horses, hogs or any 

 other animal, much depends upon the parent stock and the 

 grading and building up of the stock to be kept to breed from. 



The size of your flock, the size the flock is desired to be in- 

 creased to, the time of the year, and the rapidity in which you 

 desire to increase has considerable to do with the selecting 

 method. However, there are several cardinal principles you 

 nuist follow when saving young l)irds lor breeding purposes, 



