34 



Aside from the special poultry farms and the farms of farmers 

 who are fanciers, there are few farms, either in Massachusetts or 

 in any other State, where selection and separation of breeding 

 stock is practised. Still there are a few, and their number is in- 

 creasing ; and it is very rare indeed to find any one who has given 

 that method a fair trial going back to the old way of hap-hazard 

 breeding. That way is too wasteful for people who need to be 

 economical, as every one should be in poultry keeping ; for profit 

 in poultry depends very much on economy in production. 



In the first place, the hap-hazard way involves those who use it 

 in quite an expense for superfluous male birds. For one hundred 

 hens there must, as a rule, be six or eight males ; with a less num- 

 ber there may sometimes be good fertility in the eggs from the 

 flock, but the numbers given are more common. Now, if only 

 twelve of the hens are actually needed to produce eggs for hatch- 

 ing, one male is enough to fertilize their eggs. We may set aside 

 another, to be held in reserve in case of an accident, or in case the 

 male used in the breeding pen fails to give satisfactory fertility. 

 All other males kept with the flock are superfluous. The poultry- 

 man who keeps superfluous males is "out" just the cost of their 

 food, plus the difference between the price of soft roasters and the 

 price of old roosters on each bird, — to say nothing of the occa- 

 sional dead losses, resulting from quarrels of these pugnacious 

 fowls. This is money that might be saved, or put where it would 

 earn something. 



A good way to use it is in the purchase of a male bird of superior 

 quality. To most farmers the prices asked by poultry breeders for 

 males that are what the farmer ought to have to improve his flock 

 seem outrageous ; yet, even at the high prices at which they are 

 held, such birds, if properly and economically used, would be 

 mqch cheaper than the kind the farmers too often buy, because 

 the price is more nearly what they think they ought to pay. 



I recall an instance illustrating this point nicely. It happened 

 some years ago in Colorado, where the farmers on " dry" farms 

 or on irrigated farms having water rights of late date have to 

 nurse the resources of their land quite as carefully as any of the 

 farmers on rocky New England farms. I was breeding a line of 

 very large Buff Leghorns, and sometimes for late hatches I crossed 

 the males on Buff Cochin and Brahma hens. The produce of this 

 cross was not unlike the Rhode Island Red, and proved very at- 

 tractive to farmers who saw it. Early one spring a farmer whom 

 I knew very well came to me to buy a cockerel. After seeing 

 some of these cross-bred hens and learning how they were bred, 

 he said he had some hens that looked a good deal like Buff Cochins, 



