64 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



younger members of the family, and the profits would secure 

 older and abler help for the heavier work of the farm, and 

 many a boy would be made a thinking, practical farmer, happy 

 in his lot, who now is chafing under his hard home-life, wait- 

 ing only for age to liberate him. 



Farmers of Massachusetts, this poultry-keeping has more 

 than a money value for you. Interest your boys in it, for 

 thereby they learn many of the principles that underlie the suc- 

 cessful breeding of stock, — fitting them, when older, the better 

 to manage cattle and horses. The rapid production of chickens 

 enables them to try as many experiments, in a few years, as 

 would take a lifetime with stock. In the breeding of fowls, 

 they learn that like produces like more surely, and only, as a 

 rule, where the stock is bred in line, and that to produce 

 chickens uniform in type and color, they must have, in both 

 sire and dam, a preponderance of the blood of the desired 

 type ; they must mate kindred blood judiciously, avoiding 

 too close relationship, — for by mating fowls of one blood for 

 three generations we produce sterility in the egg. They learn 

 that prepotency of sire i3 more marked in the mating of kin- 

 dred blood, and in the offspring of dams of weak constitution, 

 and when appearing in the coupling of radically different 

 blood, that it is an exception and not the rule. They learn that 

 the blood most difficult to subjugate, in the end has more 

 lasting quality, and does the flock the most good as a new 

 infusion of blood ; these interests, once awakened, cannot 

 slumber; the boys become thoughtful, and, as years increase, 

 you find in them a help not found in your hireling. 



So far I have tried to show the best management of adult 

 fowls. But this stock, from year to year, must be renewed ; 

 for beyond the second year, younger stock will be found to 

 pay much better, and those birds that are coming two years 

 old in June, should be sold as poultry just before chickens 

 come into the market, when they bring a much better price, 

 aud their value will replace them with young stock. If the 

 young stock is to be reared on the farm, it will necessitate 

 the rearing of as many chickens as the breeding-stock num- 

 ber ; for chicks hatch nearly equal as to sex, which only 

 enables you to replace the two-year-old birds each year sent 

 to market. 



