AMERICAN POULTRY CULTURE 



duce sound, thoroughly healthy stock stock that 

 has the ability to resist and reject disease we must 

 breed through several generations for health and 

 vitality, the same as we would breed for other 

 points of practical value, and so establish and per- 

 petuate the habit of reproducing healthy specimens 

 in future generations. It is probably true that a 

 very large per cent, of the failures of beginners 

 to get good hatches from their eggs, or to success- 

 fully rear a large percentage of their chicks, is due 

 to the neglect of these cardinal principles. 



Fowls with constitutional taint or which are 

 otherwise debilitated, never did and never can, in 

 the very nature of things, produce eggs that will 

 hatch healthy, vigorous chicks. Fowls that show 

 any symptoms of disease at all should never be 

 bred from, and the same thing is true of birds that 

 have at any time in the past been seriously ill, for, 

 while they may have apparently recovered, there 

 are nine chances to one there is yet and always 

 will be a weak spot there somewhere, and the dis- 

 ease is always liable to crop out again in the pro- 

 geny at any time. Eggs from hens that have been 

 forced for great egg production during the winter 

 months are always more or less weak-germed in 

 the spring, and give correspondingly poor hatches 

 and weak chicks. The same kind of results usually 

 come from eggs laid by late-hatched pullets which 

 are not fully developed and matured. 



196 



