148 POULTR?Y-CRAFT. 
have in the way of a hen, that is not so poor that for very shame they cannot 
use her, trusting to a good male to stamp his quality on all the offspring. 
Thus they lumber’ their premises with a lot of cull chicks, which over-crowd 
the better ones, and prevent the few good ones from developing into what 
they might become if given more room and better care. Others, who breed 
from several pens, instead of mating best males to best females, make com- 
promise matings * in order to get more and larger breeding yards; sacrificing 
quality to quantity at every point. This is not good breeding, neither is it 
good business policy. Good breeders breed only from the best of their good 
birds. 
200. One Law for Fancier and Farmer. — The wisdom of close cull- 
ing in breeding fancy stock is generally admitted, but many amateurs still 
insist that for them such close culling is impracticable. Most practical breeders, 
also, do not cull as closely as they should. One who has not much room will 
say that it is not worth while to take such pains for a few chicks. He ought, 
rather, to think it most important that none of his limited space be wasted on 
poor chicks. If he has room to rear chicks, he certainly has room to separate 
as many of his best hens as are needed to lay the eggs from which to hatch the 
chicks. One who must rear a large number of chicks will say that if he culls 
as closely as he knows he ought to, he will not have hens enough to lay the 
eggs he needs for hatching. That by no means follows. What is more likely 
to happen is, that with better average breeding stock, less crowded and better 
cared for, he will rear more and better chicks, though not as many eggs are 
set. 
201. The Points to be Considered in Selecting, are: Pedigree, 
Appearance, Performance, Condition. 
202. Pedigree.— Good fowls from poor stock are worth little as breeders. 
Good fowls of unknown ancestry are to be used with extreme caution. Good 
fowls of known good ancestry are valuable in the breeding yard in proportion 
as their ancestry was continuously uniformly good, when measured by the 
standard by which the progeny are to be measured. The mere fact that a 
fowl is ‘* pedigreed,” the names, or band numbers of its ancestors known, is 
worth nothing at all in breeding. The important thing to know is, how like 
they were to the desired type, and in what they differed. 
‘203. Appearance includes Shape, Size and Weight, and Color.— Typ- 
ical shapes of pure bred fowls are shown in the illustrations in Chapter V. In 
selecting for breeding, the breed type should be followed closely; departures 
from it should be made only for the purpose of strengthening a feature in 
* NoTE.— Every mating is to some extent a compromise, a balancing of merits and 
defects. The reference here, however, is to the practice of using birds that for the good 
of the breed should go to the pot, in extreme matings which produce many birds that 
look all right, but are of little value as breeders. 
