CHAPTER III 



Single Comb Brow^n Leghorns 



[istory of Their Development — Uniform Flocks Bred Thirty Years Ago — Jndges Differed Then More 



Widely Than Now — Old Style Leghorns Described — Factors that Have Brought the 



Brown Leghorns to Their Present Excellence — Changes ia Scale of 



Points, Shane and Color — Ideal Leghorns of Today. 



AHhnr C. Smith 



I AM very glad to furnish the readers of this book 

 with whatever knowledge has come within the 

 scope of my observations during the twenty years 

 that I have been a breeder and exhibitor of this ever pop- 

 ular variety, and those facts which I picked up during the 

 few years previous. It was the ambition of my boyhood 

 to own the best Brown Leghorns that any one owned 

 and therefore I began to study them as seen at the shows 

 in my locality, about 1880 or a year or two sooner. 



I have also recollection of a fine flock of these fowls 

 that was kept on the next place in the early 70's. These 

 may' or may not have been "diamonds of the first water," 

 but they were uniform as a flock. The females were me- 

 dium brown in color, but the males were rather light red 

 or yellow in hackle and saddle. These birds were in gen- 

 eral appearance much the same as 

 those of the early 80's. They were 

 large in body, short in legs, and 

 heavy in combs. Briefly put, the gen- 

 eral tendency during the past thirty 

 years has been to develop a dark 

 red. even colored male and a finely 

 penciled, seal brown female. This, so 

 far as color is concerned, may be said 

 to be the goal of our ambitions. To 

 trace the revolution of the modern 

 Brown Leghorns, step by step, but 

 simply in outline, will be the aim of 

 the greater part of this article. If 

 some of the older exhibitors would 

 give us a treatise on this subject, con- 

 sidering the years covered by each 

 standard as a period of flight of steps 

 in the ascent to perfection, and each 

 year as a step, it would form an in- 

 structive and interesting work. 



The Old Type of Leghorn 



The type then was certainly dif- 

 ferent from the type of today, but 

 the male has not changed to so great 

 an extent as the female. Judges dif- 

 fered in their opinion in those days 

 much more than they do today, 

 therefore, the winning specimens 

 often showed a great variety of types. 



The males of the early 80's were 

 as a rule very much lighter in neck 

 and saddle than those of today. A 

 male without a pronounced yellow 

 saddle was the exception. Still, it is 

 a fact that other things being equal, 

 the darker male usually won. There 

 was at that time as now. a constant 



leaning toward darker color and there appeared occa- 

 sionally a male as dark as those of today. 



But with all the changes in the type of the male, they 

 are comparatively small when considered with the changes 

 made in the type of female. This sex had ha dly outgrown 

 the appellation of Red Leghorn, which was applied to it 

 from the very first. The breast was rather reddish 

 salmon. The wings were red, or bricky, as they were 

 called and the neck weak in striping, while the back and 

 wings showed prominent light shafting and the pencihng 

 was much coarser than it is at the present time. 



The Old Standards. 



The standards of 1875, 1879, and 1883 are practically 

 identical and call for a long, well a.ched and well hackled 



-^fe^^' 



^:«^^ 



S. C. BROWN LEGHORN HEN "PRIDE OF LEGHORN ALLEY" 



