10 



breast and a poor development of the abdomen, whereas the 

 strong-vitality bird is strong in those points. Now, if you 

 would compare each of those birds with a triangle you would 

 see that the weak bird, because of its shape, has a tendency to 

 narrow at the shanks, whereas the strong bird has less of a 

 tendency to the triangular form. We say, therefore, that, 

 comparing each of the breeds, of course according to its type, 

 with individuals within that breed the birds of high vitality 

 are those that more nearly approach the parallelogram form 

 than the triangular form, and this is as true of baby chicks as 

 it is of mature fowls, either male or female. If one will get 

 those points fixed in his mind he will be able, with a great deal 

 of accuracy, to eliminate early in the season all of the low- 

 vitality chickens in his flock, sell them alive at whatever he 

 can get for them, and keep only the stronger and more robust 

 individuals in his flock. A person ought to select early in the 

 development of his chickens a few of the strongest, most rapid 

 growing, best birds for future use as breeders, because occasion- 

 ally birds that do not grow well during the early part of their 

 lives, after they once get well feathered out are more difficult 

 to detect than they are at early stages in their development. 



At the college plant last year we selected three lots of white 

 Leghorn cockerels on the basis of the characteristics which I 

 have pointed out. Then we started a series of observations to 

 find out whether there was any difference in the actual breed- 

 ing value of these three groups, and so they were placed in 

 pens of hens. We had a bunch of 43 white Leghorn hens in 

 pens, and men were stationed in those pens for regular hours 

 during the day. The males were colored with different diamond 

 dyes and the females were marked with different colored paints 

 on their wings, with marks and numbers, and the actual num- 

 ber of matlngs that took place was recorded to see what the 

 difference in the efficiency of these birds was, based on external 

 characteristics in selection. 



This shows that a man must be as discriminating in the 

 selection of his males as he would expect to be in selecting his 

 females, with regard to vigor and productive power, and just 

 because of the fact that you can be more discriminating with 

 your males makes it all the more important why a person 



