92 THE AMERICAN BREEDS OF POULTRY 



are built up not by flock breeding, but by the breeding of selected 

 individuals; just as a good bird is good not because of a glowing 

 generality of "goodness," but because the bird is an aggregation of 

 units that are in themselves good; and the judge who would fully 

 appreciate such a bird, or the breeder who would mate it so as to 

 make it yield improvement in the next generation, must be a man 

 who can examine the units, i.e., the comb, the eye, the back shape, 

 feather and color, and so on, and thus know not only why the bird as 

 a whole is good, but in what particulars it is good and in what par- 

 ticulars it is deficient. 



The color patterns run in grooves or ruts, so to speak. When a 

 man speaks of the tendencies in his line he means the natural tend- 

 ency of the birds to breed in certain directions. 



Inheritance of barred color. If we examine the Barred Rocks, we 

 find an inherent tendency for the males to come lighter than the 

 females. This has been attributed to a Black Cochin hen that was 

 used in the original cross, and the question has been asked why the 

 breed could not have been made by using a black male on Dominique 

 hens instead of vice versa. Of course, the early breeders had to use 

 what was available, which consisted of a Dominique or cuckoo 

 barred male. He was mated to a Black Cochin or, as then called, a 

 Black Java female. 



Later study has shown that this is the way the barred color 

 pattern is inherited, i.e., from the male. The female can add strength 

 of color, but barring itself is a character that is linked with the male, 

 a sex-linked character, and the male can be pure for barring and 

 transmit it to his progeny. Thus, if a barred male is mated to females 

 of a heavily pigmented variety, like the Dark Cornish, the chicks 

 are relatively dark, but barred; whereas if the cross is reversed and 

 a Dark Cornish male is crossed on Barred Plymouth Rock females, 

 the cockerels alone have barred plumage and the pullets are black. 



Barring behaves in transmission like the factor for high winter egg 

 production (Chapter III); the pattern is from the male, the color 

 from the females. A properly bred male will therefore grade up a 

 flock of females in a single generation, and a properly bred female 

 will transmit her quality of barring to her sons. 



Let us inquire further into this inheritance of color. Herewith 

 is illustrated a sample of the grading-up work with purebred sires 

 that has been carried on at the U. S. Department of Agriculture 

 poultry farm. There is shown a black mongrel and a barred daugh- 

 ter, also a tawny red mongrel and a barred daughter. That is because 

 these mongrel hens were mated to a Plymouth Rock male that was 

 pure for the factor of barring. The barred color type is inherited 

 from the male. The female can transmit strength of color, but bar- 

 ring itself is a character that is linked with the male, a sex-linked 

 character. A purebred Barred Plymouth Rock male will stamp his 

 color type on a flock of mongrel pullets in a single generation. 



