BARRED PLYMOUTH ROCKS 119 



Nevertheless the Bradley male line was very popular. Because 

 of the intensity and strength of its dark, narrow, clear-to-the-skin 

 barring, the average breeder could buy and use a Bradley bird to 

 great advantage. These rich blood lines were always to be counted 

 upon to strengthen the barring of any average breeder's flock and the 

 effect lasted and did not run out for several generations. The well 

 known integrity of Victor Bradley and the strength of his male line, 

 gave him a tremendous hold on the Barred Rock business. M. S. 

 Gardner was an advocate of the Bradley line, as were other leading 

 breeders and judges throughout the country. 



Latham's pullet line. Latham specialized in females; and like the 

 others of this illustrious group of Barred Rock specialists, he was a 

 breeder of his birds. It was some years before he got his blood lines 

 to producing, and during this time it is related that some of his com- 

 petitors joshed him by asking: "Charlie, w T hy don't you buy a bird to 

 win." However, the workman plodded on, he served his apprentice- 

 ship amid the laughs and free advice of the journeymen of the day 

 and at last at Boston, 1898, won 1st on a pullet that became the mother 

 of a line of winning females that lifted their breeder to the forefront 

 for a span of fifteen years. 



Latham specialized in the production of females, breeding them, 

 as other breeders of this enlightened period, by the double mating 

 system, a system that included the breeding of a light male to exhibi- 

 tion colored females to produce good females. This was called the 

 "pullet line" and birds so bred was called "pulletbred." The best 

 cockerels of same period, as at the present time, were being produced 

 by mating an exhibition colored cockerel to narrow-barred hens 

 whose dark bar was so heavy that it showed metallic sheen. This 

 system of running two separate lines, one to produce Standard colored 

 females and the other to produce Standard colored males, was double 

 mating. 



Latham did not bother with the cockerel line, devoting all his 

 energies to the pullet line. He grew twice as many of this one line 

 as though he had been handling both the cockerel and pullet lines. 

 His thought was not divided, but his business was, for he had none 

 of the cockerel line to sell. Moreover, Latham's ambition, like his 

 trustworthiness, was beyond the dollar. He was an intelligent, deep- 

 thinking, earnest, enthusiastic breeder. Although his business was 

 limited to the female side of the Barred Plymouth Rock breed, and 

 he had an invalid wife and no source of income other than his poultry 

 business, he declined to sell eggs for hatching one year, giving as his 

 reason that when he sold eggs he had to enlarge his matings, and 

 that he thought he could breed better birds by limiting his matings 

 to only his finest females. Many a breeder would have taken his best 

 females, put them in a separate pen and reserved their eggs for his 

 own hatching, while he sold from the remaining flock. But Latham 

 was too earnest, too conservative, too high-spirited for that. 



