maine agriculturai, experiment station. i9 



3. Ceean Food. 



4. Ceean Water. 



5. CeEan Yards and Clean Range. 



6. Ceean Incubators and Brooders. 



7. Ceean Birds, Outside and Inside. 



The Selection of Breeding Stock. 



At the Maine Agricultural Experiment Station the poultry 

 plant is conducted for purely experimental purposes in connec- 

 tion with the study of the principles of breeding. On that ac- 

 count the considerations which determine the choice of birds 

 to go into the breeding pens are somewhat different to what 

 they would be in a purely commercial plant. It will therefore 

 be advisable to discuss here only those general guiding princi- 

 ples in regard to the selection of breeding stock, which the ex- 

 perience of this Station has demonstrated to be of fundamen- 

 tal importance in building up an economically productive 

 strain of poultry. 



Whatever the object of the breeder, whether egg production, 

 table fowl production, or the fancy, the first selection of 

 breeding stock should be for constitutional vigor and vitality. 

 No bird which shows the slightest sign of weakness or lack of 

 vigor should be used as a breeder. The selection for constitu- 

 tional vigor should begin at a very early age and be continued 

 until the pens are mated. It is a great mistake to leave the 

 whole of the process of selection until just prior to the breed- 

 ing season. As the chicks are growing on the range the most 

 vigorous ones, those which impress themselves in the eye of the 

 breeder as surpassing their associates in vitality, rate of growth, 

 vigor, etc., should be marked and watched. With later develop- 

 ment some of these early selected birds will fail to fulfill the 

 promise of their youth and will then be discarded. Others 

 which were not conspicuously excellent at an early age will 

 develop into unusually good specimens later. They may 

 then be taken into the selected group. Finally as the mating 

 season approaches the breeder should go carefully over this 

 group of birds which have been selected from the beginning of 

 their lives, and pick out the most vigorous of the lot which 

 also carry the other qualities for which he is breeding. The 



