Breeding White Leghorns to Standard liequircnieiits 



Type and Size of Great Importance in the Seleetinn of rtreeding Stock. 

 Ezra Cornell 



IT WOULD seem an easy matter to tell others how 

 to breed exhibition White Leghorns, but I find it 

 otherwise. The whole story seems to be told when 

 you have said, "Mate your best exhibition males with your 

 best exhibition females." Theoretically, that is all there 

 is of it. and would probably leave nothing more to say if 

 our best exhibition birds were perfect and had been bred 

 from perfect specimens. But where the rub comes, is 

 that our birds are never either perfect or alike — every 

 bird ha? its faults. They may be slight, but still they 

 exist. It is these faults, perhaps, added to those of the 

 mate, and as like as not accentuated in the offspring, that 

 make all the trouble. If White Leghorns had been bred 

 true to the standard for centuries and were a product of 

 nature, it would be a comparatively easy matter to per- 

 petuate standard characteristics without the faults, but as 

 they are a production of man's genius, they have a strong 

 tendency, as have all our domestic fowls, to revert to their 

 natural or original state. It is for these reasons that 

 those traits which we consider faults are so persistently 

 cropping out. 



How to keep your birds up to the highest state of 

 perfection is a problem which presents itself with each 

 year's matings. You must study the standard, study the 

 ideal cuts and learn to know exactly what is wanted — 

 then study your birds. Never breed from a bird having 

 a serious fault, or mate birds that are faulty in corres- 

 ponding sections; if you do, the fault will probably re- 

 appear even more prominently in a very large percentage 

 of the offspring. Another important thing and one that 

 must not be neglected or slighted is to know that your 

 birds are well bred and to know the faults that were 

 greatest in their ancestors. You might get an extremely 

 fine specimen which was produced by chance; that is, 

 bred from inferior birds, but such a bird is not, as a rule, 

 a good breeder. Good stock birds are only produced 

 after years of careful breeding — after mating specimens 

 of the finest standard type for a succession of years. In 

 this way and in no other will the desired traits become 

 well fixed and reproduce with any degree of satisfaction. 



The best White Leghorns I have known have been 

 produced by standard or single matings, that is, exhibition 

 males and females have been produced from the same 

 mating. There is no necessity to resort to double mat- 

 ings unless it is to produce slightly better lobes, but this 

 is too insignificant to repay one for the extra trouble and 

 expense. 



Our birds must, first of all, be true to type, as it is 

 type that makes the breed. To get birds correct in shape, 

 you must learn what the correct shape or type is, and 

 there is no better way of learning this than to study your 

 standard, also the ideal cuts. Do not believe that the tail 

 should be carried low or well back, because some breeder 

 or judge happens to have gotten such an idea and pub- 

 lishes an article setting forth his notion as a fact. Refer 

 to your standard and see what it says and, as a rule, you 

 will not go far wrong if you follow it. 



Let us consider size. There is no fixed size required, 

 consequently there is a vast difference of opinion as to 

 what the correct Leghorn should weigh. Personally, I 

 prefer the females to weigh five pounds, and the cocks to 

 weigh si.x and one-half pounds. There is not much dif- 



ference in the weights of the hens and pullets at the time 

 of our winter shows, but the cockerels have not then at- 

 tained their full weight; they are somewhat slower in 

 filling out, the heavier layers are slower to mature, are 

 poorer layers, and are almost always of a poor type. 

 Many will undoubtedly consider these large weights, but 

 they are about the size of the best birds seen at New 

 York and Boston. I have seen Leghorn hens, both in 

 Whites and Browns, at New York weighing six and one- 

 half pounds, and I saw one Brown Leghorn cockerel 

 which weighed eight and one-half pounds. Such birds 

 are of course extreme and are undesirable. 



Next take the 'head, the most essential feature of 

 which is the comb. This must be good, especially on the 

 Whites. No matter how good your bird is in other sec- 

 tions, he will not pass muster either as an exhibition bird 

 or as a breeder if his comb is bad. A Leghorn comb 

 should be of medium size, not large, as many seem to 

 think. The female comb should be firm on the head and 

 stand perfectly erect in front, including the first point, the 

 rest of the points falling gracefully to one side. Such 

 combs as this are by no means common; in fact, too little 

 attention has been given to this particular. With such 

 combs as these on the females you will have little trouble 

 producing good combs on the males. 



Another important point is that the front of the comb 

 should not extend forward on leaY.ing the head. If it does, 

 you will have too much material and will get small folds 

 commonly called "thumb marks," which are unsightly and 

 should be avoided. The present standard calls for five 

 points. In this I think it is too severe. If a comb is 

 otherwise good I think it makes no difference whether 

 there are five or six points, and you can not tell at a 

 glance which number a bird has; but if there are only 

 four, or if there are eight, you will notice at once that 

 there are too few or too many. It is not my intention to 

 advise any breeder not to follow the standard as nearly 

 as is possible. 



The earlobes are the next important part of the 

 head, and are by no means easily produced by single 

 matings. If you get good, well enameled lobes on the 

 females you are likely to get males with white faces, 

 whereas if the face and lobes of the male are good, you 

 will probably get poorly enameled lobes on the females. 

 The earlobes of the males rarely remain good as the bird 

 advances in age; they almost invariably become rough 

 and slightly specked or streaked with red. or else the bird 

 becomes white in the face. The latter is by all odds the 

 least desirable. The white face is very unpleasing in ap- 

 pearance and is something I would not have. You will 

 frequently get cockerels which will never go white in the 

 face, but which possess lobes that are indistinctly out- 

 lined. Such birds are usually considered to have white 

 faces, whereas they have not and never will have and 

 should of course be less severely criticised than those 

 which have that failing. I like cockerels to have a fair 

 sized, round, well enameled lobe — one that will almost al- 

 ways show a little red in older age, and females with 

 rather poorly enameled lobes, which are not too prom- 

 inent. Females with lobes of this kind will produce good 

 lobes on the male offspring, and will themselves pass 

 muster in the show room, with but a slight cut. 



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