No. 4.] POULTRY KEEPING ON THE FARM. 345 



new poultry houses should shelter only first-class business 

 birds. Here is opportunity for the wise use of considerable 

 capital and brains as well. If you have had some experience 

 in selecting fowls and know a good bird when you see it, all 

 the better for yourself and your poultry business. If you 

 have a lot of mongrels or fowls of mixed blood, work them 

 otf as you find opportunity to do so advantageously, and 

 purchase of some reliable breeder of really first-class poultry 

 a pen or at least a trio of the best fowls he will sell you, and 

 pay the price. You may prefer to purchase several sittings 

 of eggs from such a poultryman, and commence your flock 

 of thoroughbreds in this way. This is successfully done in 

 some cases, but there is often the risk to run of disappoint- 

 ment, besides delay in getting well started. When your 

 valuable fowls begin to lay, keep a record of their eggs, 

 using trap nests if necessary ; and in hatching note which 

 eggs produce the most and the best chicks. As the chicks 

 grow and develop, note which ones are the most thrifty, 

 which are the earliest to mature, which are plump enough 

 for the table at any age, which develop into early layers, 

 which resemble most their parents and in what respects, and 

 which come nearest the type of the breed. Study all the 

 characteristics, with the idea of learning which birds to select 

 for future breeders. (It is not best here to enter into a dis- 

 course upon the principles of breeding, but any one especially 

 interested will find something bearing upon this subject in 

 the twelfth and thirteenth annual reports of the Rhode Island 

 Agricultural Experiment Station.) In the poultry business 

 it is rarely best to have but one string to your bow. In 

 exceptional cases it may be well to depend almost wholly 

 upon the sale of eggs for the income, in others to raise 

 broilers, young roasters or mature fowls for the market ; but 

 usually it is well to combine some or all of these, and to 

 also sell eggs for hatching, and dispose of surplus high-class 

 birds for breeders. Combine as many sources of income as 

 are profitable, and push the lines that are most renumerative. 

 It is with this idea in mind that I have strongly advised the 

 purchase of the finest fowls obtainable. The next step is to 

 improve them, which can be done if the poultryman will 

 persist in his study of the individual fowls, watch the results 



