398 BOAKD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



Since then I have taken some pains to learn from other 

 buyers — and to see for myself as I went about among 

 poultry keepers — whether his statements were correct; and 

 I have to conclude that they were, and that the average 

 fowl of to-day is but a slight improvement over the best 

 ordinary fowls of sixty or seventy years ago. Vfhy is it? 

 I think the answer is, there has not been the improvement 

 of poultry generally that there ought to be, because the 

 farmer is so seldom a poultry breeder. 



That does not indicate that farmers as a class are different 

 from other [)oultry keepers. The ordinary pt)ultry keeper, 

 even the ordinary fancier, is not, strictly speaking, a 

 breeder. But, inasmuch as the farmers produce by far the 

 greater part of the country's supply of poultry and eggs 

 (some authorities say nine-tenths of it) , what farmers gen- 

 erally do or fail to do with regard to poultry is of vastly 

 more importance than what the rest of the poultry keepers 

 do or neglect to do ; for, if all the other poultry keepers by 

 general consent should ado})t a course which would greatly 

 improve their stocks of fowls, the effect on the whole market 

 product would be small, as compared with the results if 

 half or even a third of the farmers were to pursue the same 

 course. 



Most people who raise poultry are just poultry grotvers. 

 They hatch the eggs of such stock as they happen to have. 

 They keep on, year after year, reproducing fowls, without 

 any definite ideas as to the particular points of excellence 

 which it would be desirable to establish in their stock. 

 They interest themselves little if at all in the principles of 

 breeding ; they follow no definite sj^stem. If they use 

 some pure-bred stock, they give no special attention to pre- 

 serving its characteristics. Oftener, indeed, such special 

 attention as they give it is in the line of getting rid of 

 whatever fixed character their fowls possess. The average 

 poultry keeper has a perfect mania for crossing breeds, and 

 nearly always he makes crosses without definite ideas about 

 what he is likely to get, or what he wants to get. Then, 

 not finding the product pleasing, he crosses again and again, 

 until, becoming disgusted with his chickens, he either 



