190 THE AMERICAN BREEDS OF POULTRY 



ments, and the Standard makers can then come up and recognize each 

 improvement as an established fact. The Keller pullet is of a rich 

 bay, as against the golden bay of the Standard, and what made her 

 color show off to such good advantage was the metallic green-black 

 lacing. Otherwise, the plumage would not have had the same luster. 



The richer tone of red ground color is a feature to be desired. 

 At the New York state fair, September, 1920, Melvin F. Uphoff, of 

 New Jersey, showed a pullet that was the sensation of the class. 

 She won first and had a rich red ground color, open laced in every 

 section and edged with a sound black lacing. 



Improvement in type. There has been a great change in the type 

 of Golden Wyandottes. In 1900 the females had the length of 

 Plymouth Rock females, not typical Wyandotte females. The males 

 were frequently unsightly because of large, loose combs. The 

 males also had too much length, their backs were too long, and their 

 tails projected beyond their backs like the tails of Rhode Island 

 Red males. In the summer of 1905 Theo. Hewes wrote: "The writer 

 has found but few birds of this variety that filled the shape require- 

 ment, while many of our winning specimens would come nearer the 

 Plymouth Rock description, quite a few of them even reaching the 

 Java type, especially in females." 



At the New York show of December, 1907, we saw for the first 

 time a Golden Wyandotte cock that was a wonderfully modeled 

 Wyandotte. There were no big combs, shallow breasts and long 

 backs among the birds in that historic class. The first cock, shov/n 

 by Charles H. Brundage, of Danbury, Connecticut, had a tail that 

 was short and bushy, and his breast was round. This cock again 

 was first at New York in 1908, and again as a four-year-old at New 

 York, 1909-10. Since that time the true Wyandotte type has been 

 more and more in evidence in the Golden variety both in the east 

 and the west. 



We believe that all of the eastern birds were from the same original 

 McKeen stock, as were the western flocks, although it should be 

 said that about the same time that McKeen started to make his 

 Golden Wyandottes, the idea of such a variety occurred to two east- 

 ern breeders, and Jacob Ryder, of Pennsylvania, and W. E. Shedd, 

 of Massachusetts, also brought out Golden Wyandottes. It is our 

 opinion, however, that the good type seen in Golden Wyandottes 

 today, both east and west, is due to selective breeding rather than 

 to different elements entering into the early origin of different 

 strains, for undoubtedly the McKeen stock was the broad foundation 

 on which all modern strains of the variety take their root. 



Mating. This variety can be single mated to better advantage than 

 its counterpart, the Silver Wyandotte. Slate under-color and black 

 markings in wings are more common to the Golden Wyandotte than 

 to the Silver. When you aim too strongly and too surely for these 



