FIRST LESSONS IN POULTRY KEEPING. 139 



LESSON XVIII . 



Exhibiting Fowls. 



Practical Value of Exhibiting to the Exhibitor. 



TOO many poultry keepers who keep poultry primarily for profit, or for poultry and 

 eggs for the home table, regard the exhibiting of fowls and the breeding of fowls 

 for "fancy" points, as of no particular interest to "practical" people, and of no 

 actual value to them. 



This is an error. Without conceding to " the fancy " that preeminence in the development 

 of poultry interests which fanciers like to claim for it, everyone well informed in poultry 

 matters must allow it credit for a great deal of the progress made and still making, and must 

 also admit that a thorough knowledge, or even a fair knowledge of the characteristics of fowls 

 and the principles of breeding for uniform results is rarely acquired by a poultryman who 

 takes no interest in exhibition points and exhibits of many fowls. There are, of course, a 

 great many so-called fanciers who know little of breeding, but the poultryman who takes no 

 interest in "fancy" points, and does not breed at all for appearance for beauty, either 

 according to the general standards or according to some fixed ideas of his own, and still pro- 

 duces good fowls, is such a rarity that I have yet to meet the first one. Practical poultrymen 

 who disregard "fancy" points, as a rule, breed absolutely without intelligent selection. A very 

 large proportion of their stock is decidedly inferior, even when nominally their stock is thor- 

 oughbred, and I have repeatedly seen in the yards of such breeders very poor birds, both male 

 and female, in the breeding pens, and good ones not used for breeding, or good males mated 

 with inferior females, and vice versa, with the result that only a very few good specimens were 

 produced when there was good stock enough in the yards, if properly handled, to have given 

 the poultryman two or three times as many good young birds as he got by his way of mismat- 

 ing, and many of them very much superior to any that he did produce. 



Now through books and papers a poultry keeper who is sufficiently interested in a variety of 

 fowls to " read up " on it, may learn a great deal without ever attending a show or making an 

 exhibit; but he is sure to get a great many ideas that are wrong, to entirely overlook many 

 points of importance, and fail much oftener than is necessary in assigning to various excellencies 

 and faults their proper values. 



Without exhibiting, a poultry keeper who will attend the shows and mingle with the fanciers 

 there, will learn a great deal that self-taught he misses, and will learn more easily and quickly 

 many of the things he would learn by himself; but it is the universal testimony of those who 

 have gone through these several degrees of instruction in breeding and selecting for points that 

 a personal experience in exhibiting when the exhibitor attends the show and gets the benefit of 

 it is the best way to learn so much better than any other way that there is no comparison. 



In such experiences the results of errors in judgment in breeding, selection, and preparation 

 of fowls for exhibition become conspicuous while the corresponding correct condition or 

 method may be clearly illustrated by a more successful competitor. Then there is no place 

 like the exhibition room for a breeder to learn to estimate the types and characteristics which 



