A POULTRY COMPENDIUM. 45 



ens be produced. Vigorous parents, on the principle 

 that "like produces like," ought to produce vigorous 

 children ; but we know that, however fine our stock may 

 be when purchased, we may, by a wrong system of 

 feeding, destroy its vitality, and the young which spring 

 from it will be " degenerate scions of a noble stock." 

 One fact should be remembered, or rather one law should 

 be stated — the young is affected by the condition of the 

 parents at the exact moment when begotten. Drunken 

 parents, in a maudlin condition, have begotten idiotic 

 children. Parents, in a low state of health, have begot- 

 ten children with impaired constitutions. Fowls out of 

 condition produce chicks out of condition, which do not 

 live out half their days, and live that half in a state of 

 weakness and uselessness which makes you, when the end 

 finally comes, wish that they had "died before they were 

 horn." 



Feed your breeding stock so as to keep them in vig- 

 orous health. Let their diet be generous but not stimu- 

 lating. Plenty of oats, and wheat, little corn (for we do 

 not wish to produce fat but muscles), plenty of green 

 food and clean water, with now and then a taste of 

 meat to keep them in heart, and furnish a variety — 

 this is the diet which leads to chicks that do not die 

 in the shell, or hold on for a few days after hatching 

 to the slender thread of their existence, only to snap it 

 in twain with the first noticeable variation in the tem- 

 perature. 



FATTENING. 



Rich food and plenty of it, close confinement and 



