FIR 1ST LESSONS IN POULTRY KEEPING. 21 



These five points cover the things to be considered in selecting breeding birds on appear- 

 ance. I think it is as well not to go beyond that in this year's lessons. 



Novices* Errors in Selection. 



The first serious mistake made by most novices in selecting breeding stock is to consider 

 eome particular feature, often a superficial one, as indicating purity of blood, and select with 

 reference to excellence in that feature. With selection on this basis, goes rejection of speci- 

 mens deficient in this feature. The result is the use for breeding of fowls which, for other 

 considerations, ought to be rejected, and the rejection for a minor fault in one place of really 

 valuable breeding fowls. The breeder must consider his matings first with reference to the 

 more important points, then with reference to the others, and must carefully estimate the total 

 breeding value of a fowl when the importance is given each point under consideration. 



In general, this method of selection gives one breeding fowls of good all round excellence 

 rather than birds of phenomenal excellence in one particular point, and it is the all round good 

 bird that experienced breeders find most reliable in the reproduction of its kind. 



Mating. 



The breeder having selected from his flock such specimens as seem to combine a pleasing 

 quality in desirable characteristics with not too marked possession of undesirable features, finds 

 his task by no means completed. Instead, he is only now ready to begin the balancing of char- 

 acteristics mentioned in the first part of the lesson as distinctively the breeder's work. 



The specimens which he has selected are not all alike. Perhaps his selection has resulted in 

 setting aside as possible breeders some specimens with very strong individual differences. It 

 may be that his birds, if all bred alike, have some objectionable feature in common, or alike fail 

 to show a pleasing excellence in a section of considerable importance. 



Standard Matings. 



Supposing the breeder has males and females of fair merit and nowhere notably deficient: 

 if he is to make but a single mating it should be of the male he considers his best, with as many 

 of the females as he considers suitable to mate with his male as the male is likely to be able to 

 serve efficiently. This is what is called a "standard mating," that is, a mating of specimens of 

 opposite sexes conforming most closely to the standard requirements for their variety. 



Compensation Matings. 



After making his Standard mating or matings a breeder may have left birds which may make 

 very valuable breeders if properly mated, but if not suitably mated will have no special breed- 

 ing value. These are, as a rule, specimens deficient only in one or a few minor points. Such 

 specimens in fact as the breeder has whose stock Is in some particular deficient. 



If one happens to have fowls of the opposite sex strong in the feature in which these fowls 

 are weak, and in other respects not unsuitable to mate with them, he may make such compen- 

 sation matiugs; or if he can buy breeding birds like-ly to offset these defects in the progeny, it is 

 well to do so, if he has room to give to chicks from experimental matings of this kind, but it is 

 poor policy to make a number of matings of different types of stock with the expectation of 

 having radical defects on one side offset by special excellence on the other. The reasons for 

 this cannot be given in the limits of a lesson like this, but the breeder who tries making many 

 matings in expectation of getting something from all his stock will shortly realize, if (as he 

 should) he keeps records of his matings, that taking one season with another he will produce 

 more good stock from one mating of his best specimens than from ten times as many specimens 

 mated up in a variety of compensation matiugs. 



While even a "Standard-' mating introduces in a degree the compensation principle in the 

 balancing of defects; with close selection, this balancing is within comparatively narrow limits, 

 and does not present the radical individual differences too often found when matings are in 

 reality crosses of extreme types of the same variety. Such extreme matings are always experi- 

 mental, and as a rule are profitable only when the object is to preserve in the stock special 

 excellence appearing in an individual which also has faults which make it unwise to mingle the 

 blood of this individual with that of the general stock, or make it dominant in it, before the 

 special defects of the fowl have been to a considerable degree eliminated. 



