FIRST LESSONS IN POULTRY KEEPING. 31 



Mating Barred Varieties. 



In considering the mating of Barred varieties, we will take up the Barred Plymouth Rock as 

 the representative of this color type known everywhere, and indeed the only one in which those 

 studying these lessons are likely to be interested. 



The Standard requires that the plumage of males and females shall be of the same uniform 

 color throughout. The exact description of this color has caused no end of controversy. Some 

 affirm that it is a black bar on a white ground, but looks blue. Others say the ground color is 

 grayish or bluish white with the darker bars blue. Breeders agreeing on color often disagree 

 about proper description of it. The amateur, however, need not puzzle himself about their 

 differences on that point. On the things that trouble him most in the appearance of his fowls, 

 the breeders are pretty well in agreement though they differ again as to the best method of 

 getting what they want. 



The beauty of Barred Plymouth Rock color is in the character of the bars. They should be 

 parallel that is, straight across the feather, not breaking at the quill, and not crescentric in 

 form, and they should be quite sharply defined. The ground color should be clean, and the 

 dark bar should be free from greenish or brownish tinge. 



Some of the faults indicated in the last paragraph are found in some degree in nearly all 

 Barred Plymouth Rocks. It is" only by using specimens as free as possible from them that a 

 breeder succeeds in getting plumage on his fowls that makes them really attractive, and it is 

 because beginners so seldom look sharply after these faults that the first few years of work with 

 Barred Rocks so often results in striking deterioration from the quality of the original stock 

 regardless of the system of mating used. 



The Two 5ystems of Mating. 



The average beginner I might go further and say ninety-nine in every hundred persons 

 who begin the breeding of Barred Plymouth Rocks accept off-hand the principle set forth by 

 the advocates of mating standard male and female to produce standard colored progeny of both 

 sexes. The advocates of single matings insist that thatsystem should be followed because it is 

 right in principle. So the beginner follows it for a while. 



Now because I went through all that, and spent a good deal of money finding out for myself 

 that the other way was better, and because I know so many of the best breeders use double 

 matings, and so few do not; in this lesson I am going to discuss the single mating system with 

 the remark that if one wants to try it he should be very sure that the birds he begins with are 

 line bred that way. 



The Double Mating of Barred Rocks. 



This system calls for two distinct lines of stock one to produce standard males, the other 

 to produce standard females. A breeder who wants to exhibit and sell Barred Rocks to a 

 general trade must mate both ways. One who likes Barred Plymouth Rocks, and can keep 

 only one mating, can breed either a cockerel or a pullet line and produce nice stock and have a 

 stock that looks as well in his yards as anyone's for be it remembered the specimens mated In 

 the show room for exhibition are not, as a rule, mated anywhere else. 



Very early in the history of the Barred Rock breeders were worried by the tendency of the 

 females to run dark, and of the males from the same mating to run light in color. Finally 

 someone (I believe it was judge H. B. May, of Natick, Mass.,) hit upon the plan of a special 

 mating for each sex. The results were so satisfactory that the idea was gradually taken up 

 and the plan followed so generally arid systematically that the leading stocks of Barred Rocks 

 in the country are now, with few exceptions, carefully line bred for many years with distinct 

 male and female lines. 



The special mating to produce males takes a male of standard or exhibition color and 

 mates him with females of the male line, that is, females bred as he is bred. Such females are 

 considerably darker than the females seen in the shows, but must be well and strongly barred. 

 From this mating come males the color of the sire; females the color of the dam. 



