402 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



late date have to nurse the resources of their land (j[uite as 

 carefully as any of the farmers on rocky New England farms. 

 I was breeding a line of very large Buff Leghorns, and 

 sometimes for late hatches I crossed the males on Buff Co- 

 chin and Brahma hens. The produce of this cross was not 

 unlike the Rhode Island Red, and proved very attractive to 

 farmers who saw it. Early one spring a farmer whom I 

 knew very well came to me to bu}^ a cockerel. After see- 

 ing some of these cross-bred hens and learning how they 

 were bred, he said he had some hens that looked a good 

 deal like Buif Cochins, — perhaps twelve or fifteen of them 

 in a flock of sixty or seventy hens ; and he thought he would 

 take a Buff Leghorn cockerel and mate with them, separat- 

 ing them from the rest of the stock. But the only bird of 

 that variety I happened to have that I could sell was one I 

 had been keeping for a reserve bird, — a big, well-built 

 fellow, too good in color to use mereh^ in cross-breeding ;^ 

 and I held him at a figure I thought no ranchman would 

 pay. So I tried to sell him a Brown Leghorn, of which I 

 had on hand a few" birds at prices that would suit hmi bet- 

 ter, though none of them had the size and shape of the Buff 

 one. Finally, when he insisted on my giving him a price 

 on that bird, I told him he could have it for four dollars. 

 He went away without buying a bird. A few days after he 

 came again, wanted to know if the bird had been sold, and, 

 learning that he had not, said, "Well, if 3"ou'll take it in 

 hay, I'll take him." I agreed to that, and he took the cock- 

 erel away with him, having first exacted a promise that I 

 would not tell "the old Avoman" the price of the bird. 



Next fall he came to me one day to tell me how well he 

 had done on that investment. Hatching only from that one 

 male, mated with a few of his best hens, he had the evenest 

 and quickest growing lot of chicks that had over been on 

 the farm. The cockerels hatched at the usual season had 

 been ready for market before prices went down : the pullets 

 well irrown, and beoinnino; to lav before winter ; and, takinof 

 it all in all, he estimated tbat they were something like fifty 

 dollars better off than if he had bought a small, cheap roos- 

 ter. " But," he said, as he concluded his story, " I haven't 

 told my old woman yet what I paid you for that rooster." 



