POULTR?Y-CRAFT. 81 
CHAPTER VI. 
Choosing a Variety.— Buying Stock. 
99. One Variety or More. —‘‘ For best results, keep but one variety,” 
say most experienced poultrymen. Few practice what they preach. It is 
not surprising, then, that their example has more weight than their precept. 
For most of those who keep fowls, one variety is exough. For many who 
want an income from poultry, one variety zs not enough. ‘* Circumstances 
alter cases.” The general rule should be: — A flock (large or small) should 
not contain fowls of different varieties. The application of this rule would 
settle the question for most poultry keepers. For the others, a good rule is :— 
As many varieties should be kept as are needed to supply, to the limit of the 
capacity of a plant, the paying demand for tts special products. One may 
be enough. Even in an extreme case, it is not probable that more than three 
or four will be zeeded. 
An error market poultrymen ought to avoid is:—keeping two or three 
varieties or brecds which, practically, fill the same bill. It does not often 
happen that more than one variety is needed for an exclusive market poultry 
plant. A market poultryman who sells some stock for breeding purposes 
does not always find the demand for stock of 42s breeding, of one variety, 
large enough to take all his surplus. By using two or more varieties, he can 
get the same results in the market branch of his business, and, being in a 
position to supply a more varied demand, may sell a larger proportion of his 
stock at the prices obtained for breeders. Thus his increased sales of breeding 
stock would justify the expense of maintaining breeding stocks of several 
varieties. 
Except in the rare event of his having made a national reputation with a 
popular variety, a breeder-fancier needs several varieties. Even as a beginner, 
it is better that he should keep a varied stock. The results of his matings for 
the first few years are, if good, apt to be happy chances. Having several 
varieties, he will hardly fail to do fairly well with at least one of them. 
When a breeder’s matings all disappoint him, his season’s work is a total 
failure. Besides this, the beginner’s position as a seller of good stock, is like 
that of the market poultryman who uses several varieties to better advantage 
than one. It would on the face of the matter seern wisest for the breeder to 
begin with one variety, adding others as he found demand for them, and as 
his skill in breeding increased; but, as a matter of fact, it takes less skill to 
breed several varieties to a fair degree of excellence than to breed one variety 
to very high excellence. 
