THE CALL OF THE HEN. 95 



CHAPTER XII. 

 SELECTING THE COCKERELS AT BROILER AGE. 



I have tried to impress on the reader the importance of 

 the careful selection of the male birds, and perhaps he is fully 

 alive to the value of doing so. He starts out at the first op- 

 portunity and visits all the poultry plants far and near, with the 

 determination to purchase the best male bird he can find. 

 Before starting out he decides ha will have nothing less than 

 200 egg type. Imagine his disappointment, when after hand- 

 ling perhaps fifty or more he can find nothing that will come 

 .any way near the 200 egg type, while if he examined the same 

 number of hens he will very likely find at least one or perhaps 

 more that will come somewhat near what he is looking for. 

 Then he will say that there is no such bird as the chart de- 

 scribes as a 200 egg type cock bird. T wish to say here that I 

 think I have at least fifty male birds, at the present writing, 

 that will scale from 200 up according to the charts. I have over 

 a dozen that will scale from 250 to 265, and these have all been 

 developed within six years, from hens with three fingers abdo- 

 men and one-fourth inch pelvic bone, mated to cockerels with 

 one and one-half finger abdomen, one-sixteenth inch pelvic 

 bone. 



The first season in California we raised about 300 cocker- 

 els up to three months of age, which is within the broiler age 

 for this section. We arranged our house and catching coop as 

 in Figs. 1 and 2, and went through the same movements that 

 we do when testing the hens, except that we do not have to 

 -use all the tests on each one of the cockerels that we use on 

 the hens. We hold the cockerels as in Figs. 5 and 6, and lay 

 our hand on his abdomen as in Fig. 7. As soon as we lay our 

 hand on his abdomen we can feel instantly whether his pelvic 

 bones are straight like Fig. 34 or crooked like Fig. 33. If his 

 pelvic bones are like Fig. 33, we have no use for him as a 

 'breeder, and put him in the shipping crate for market. If his 

 pelvic bones are straight like Fig. 34, we measure the depth of 

 his abdomen. If it is less than two fingers, we put him in the 

 shipping crate. If two fingers or over, we examine him for pre- 

 potency, and if the projection on the back of his head as in 

 No. 1 plate 35, is less than ^n eighth of an inch behind a line 

 drawn at right angles from the back of the ear, (see Figs. 41, 42 



