6 NATURE AND ITS 



never had any trouble. Now I raised them by a new way, 

 incubators and brooders, and they die faster than I can 

 raise them, and what I did raise got sick and had roup, etc., 

 if the weather changes or the wind blew in a different di- 

 rection. During this time I noticed that farmers had poor 

 houses and old sheds. The wind and snow blew into the 

 houses, but they had no colds or roup among their poultry. 

 These farmers did not know anything about poultry, never 

 read a Poultry book or a Poultry paper, and did not know 

 that there was anything written on the subject. Some of 

 them afterward bought books and papers on Poultry and 

 from that very time they had trouble of all kinds. 



The publishers and editors of the Poultry papers are not 

 in the fault. But those who write for these papers and some 

 breeders of poultry sixty years ago have written books on 

 poultry. These very men found that poultry paid if they 

 were cared for properly. They kept records of eggs laid, 

 commenced to get fine stock, and every year they imported 

 a new breed. They improved their poultry, bred them to a 

 certain color, and now they are so finely bred and inbred so 

 many times that their constitution has been ruined, their 

 blood thinned, and they are weakly, consumptive and good- 

 for-nothing fowls. This is positive proof, as every one knows, 

 that inbreeding is the most terrible undertaking that any 

 person can conceive. I don't inbreed my poultry, but you 

 must remember that they have been inbred from ten to 

 twenty times before you ever got your Poultry. This in- 

 breeding is to get a certain strain, and when the color is 

 obtained which they wish, then they breed for shape, for 

 size, for a certain color of eye. Every feather must be just 

 so, and if the feather must be penciled, then they try for ten 

 years to get a feather such as the Standard calls for. Don't 

 you call this inbreeding? I do. This is just what has 

 ruined our Poultry. Then they hatch eggs by incubators 

 and raise the chicks by brooders, and this is another way to 

 ruin the health of the fowls. The hens that laid the eggs 

 were not really sick, if they had been they could not lay 

 eggs. They were weakened by inbreeding, and it is difficult 



