86 THE CALL OF THE HEN. 



with this method is that while the hen may lay a large number 

 of eggs, she may not have the faculty to transmit her laying 

 qualities to her offspring, and her cockerels may be deficient 

 in both egg-laying qualities and the ability to transmit what 

 good qualities they may possess to their progeny. 



Again I have seen a great many cases where poultry 

 farmers would send away and buy a lot of cockerels. The man 

 that raised and sold them had no knowledge of how to classify 

 them, and the man who bought them knew he was buying 

 cockerels and that is all he did know about them. He could not 

 be sure whether they would increase his egg yield or not. He 

 had to pay his money and take chances. It was nothing more 

 or less than a gamble. But the clays of gambling in the poultry 

 business are past for the intelligent progressive poultryman. 

 No longer will he be obliged to trust to luck or intuition. He 

 will be able to select his male birds with as much assurance as 

 his hens, and instead of groping in the dark he will have the 

 satisfaction of seeing and knowing just what he is doing, by 

 bearing in mind the instructions in this chapter. 



The reader will by this time be familiar with the different 

 types and capacities of hens, and will not be surprised to learn 

 there is a similar number of variations in the male birds ; and if 

 one wishes to produce a certain type and capacity in a pullet 

 or cockerel, he must select the parent birds that will produce 

 that type. We know how to select the hen, we will now take 

 up the study of how to select the male bird. 



We go through the same movements in selecting or test- 

 ing the male bird as we do in selecting the hen, but we use a 

 different set of charts. For example it is possible for a hen to 

 change from six to three fingers in abdominal capacity within 

 a month, and be healthy and active and in another month to 

 return back to her original six fingers capacity. But it is not so 

 with the male bird, after he is mature. I have tested male 

 birds at nine months of age that scored four fingers abdomen, 

 one-sixteenth pelvic bone, that did not change for four ye^rs 

 except that their pelvic bone being one-sixteenth of an inch 

 thick at nine months old, I have found them to be one eighth 



