110 THE CALL OF THE HEN. 



"But," 1 hear some sarcastic reader say, "we certainly 

 can diminish or increase their prepotency by alternately 

 starving and feeding them well." That is begging the ques- 

 tion. You could affect their fecundity very readily; but what 

 the writer wishes to impress on the reader is, that while type 

 and prepotency are fixed before birth, and also the ability to 

 govern capacity, and while type and prepotency can be pro- 

 cured only by selection, capacity can be governed more or 

 less by environment in other words, feed, care, the right 

 kind of houses, ground, etc. We will say, for instance, the 

 reader has a pen of egg-type birds, both male and female, 

 with large prepotency and capacity, and suppose they were 

 all 200-egg birds. There would be no difficulty in raising 

 chickens from them with the same degree of type and pre- 

 potency; but if he should stint them in feed of the proper 

 kind and quantity while growing, they would lose in capacity 

 each generation. I develop the capacity of both pullets and 

 cockerels from the time they are three days old to the fullest 

 extent by the most liberal feeding, care, and surrounding 

 conditions. 



In concluding this chapter, I would say that the bird with 

 the desired characteristics is more or less of a sport, and the 

 value of the "Hogan Test" lies in the fact that with this 

 knowledge you can discover the sport and perpetuate it 

 through intelligent breeding. Again, I want to say here that 

 my best cockerels measure four fingers abdomen at three 

 months old. All my stock is developed as much as possible 

 at this age, and I try to prevent the cockerels from shrinking. 

 But the pullets will develop until some of them are six fingers 

 abdomen. 



The following article from the Petaluma Weekly Poultry 

 Journal emphasizes what we have said in regard to the feeding 

 and care of young stock. These cockerels were not crammed 

 or penned up and fed, but were taken off free range and 

 sent directly to market. I wish to remind the reader here 

 that in examining the cockerels for prepotency he may be 

 proficient enough in the matter to examine them by holding 

 them between his knees and not be obliged to put each one 

 in a sack. The article follows: 



