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The fowl of low vitality tends to fill a triangle and not a parallel- 

 ogram, having rather a sunken breast, tucked up abdomen, narrow 

 between legs, thin shanks, a tendency for the drooping tail, a rather 

 flat long beak, rather small comb, drooping eyelids, giving what we 

 ordinarily call a "crow-headed" appearance, and a long, thin neck. 

 Possibly these chicks would have stood just as high one as the other, 

 and yet the chicken of high vitality of the same age and breed might 

 weigh a pound or two pounds more than the other one, and this same 

 principle applies not only to the mature fowl but to the large chick 



Figure 1. Males of high and low vitality. Note how the individual of high 

 vitality more nearly fills a parallelogram, and that the male of low vitality is more 

 the shape of a triangle when the back line of a parallelogram and triangle are the 

 same with the apex at the hook. This rule is suggestive and helpful in selecting fowls 

 of strong constitution. 



and baby chick. Take a little chick right from the incubator, and if 

 he is a husky fellow, the kind that would rather live than die, he will 

 be hard and full and plump, and he will have that thick, well-de- 

 veloped head and neck, that parallelogram-shaped body, full crop, 

 full abdomen, and he will have a heavy plump shank and thighs, full 

 prominent eye, and he will have a good broad back, heavy down, 

 which rapidly changes to a big, heavy coat of plumage ; whereas the 

 chick of low vitality, the baby chick, will be a little tucked-up thing, 

 breast sunken in, pinched-up abdomen, thin, pale shank, thin beak, 

 sunken eye and droopy eyelids. You will see by this test that one 

 can weed out almost unmistakably the weak from the strong. You 

 will notice that there is a certain correlation of development apply- 

 ing to these two birds which may be summarized something like this : 

 That in the chicken of high vitality you have the stout, thick curved 

 beak, round, full, well-shaped head, short thick neck, thick heavy 

 body, thick, short-jointed, heavy shanks, as compared to the long thin 

 beak, long thin flat head, long thin neck, long thin back, slender body 

 and long thin slender shanks, long slim toes and long toe nails. 



You must have depth of body and width of backs in order to get 

 capacity to carry the internal organs. The hen in one sense of the 

 word is a living machine, and is built on the same principle that a 

 piece of machinery is, i. e., liable to be weak or get out of order. It 



