84 



THE ASIATICS. 



Pen No. 4. Male very large, full fountain tail; heaviest 

 in weight; metallic black, but not heavy in green over-color. 



The females shortest in joints, but having intense green 

 sheen. In all our mating we, of course, have considered 

 only the first selected for mating, all being strictly first-class 

 specimens. Each pen so selected as to be even in shape and 

 color; having been so selected to secure a uniform lot in the 

 progeny. 



THE TREATMENT. 



There is no race of fowls that needs more to be kept 

 from the direct scorching rays of the sun, which does more 

 to bar the plumage with those objectionable purple or bronze 

 bars, than all else they are subjected to. One need not be 

 much of an observer to see that early hatched chicks that 

 get their adult coats during the heat of our harvest sun and 

 those confined in shadeless yards, are more severely tar- 

 nished by these objectionable bars. This should influence 

 you to secure for them all the shade possible during August 

 and September, especially when the last coat of feathers are 

 in their pin feather state. 



These bars never appear upon birds with a dull or 

 smutty colored plumage, but who considers such as first- 

 class Langshan color? All the use I see for such color is a 

 secondary one, i. e., mating a few very large, strong bens of 

 this color to males of intense sheeny character, even if 

 somewhat barred with bronze, that have become thus col- 

 ored by the mating of both sexes highly colored. Then to 

 breed a set of his pullets of first-class color back to him, 

 when as a cock and having lost the bar, he has molted into 

 perfect form as a cock. These pullets then three-fourths of 

 his own blood, would be most likely as near perfection of 

 color as is often seen, and many such have been produced 

 in this manner. The male product of this first cross of the 

 dull color had best be sacrificed as capons, or market poul- 

 try of some sort. 



If there is a breed where it is especially necessary to 

 divide the sexes at an early age, if show specimens are de- 

 sired, it is the Langshan, and we would do this at the age 



of four months, keeping the males by themselves and the 

 females in small flocks, free from the males. As soon as 

 the breeding season is over select your best hens, allowing 

 them to molt in celibacy, that they may molt in quiet, and 

 not again be put with the males until after the show season 

 is over. When it is a fact that often a single point blankets 

 the first three prizes of an exhibition, one sees how useless 

 it is to exhibit a pullet or a hen with a flattened or mutilated 

 plumage of the saddle. Watch the growth of plumage, keep- 

 ing all foul growth and broken feathers removed, in order 

 that perfect new ones may replace them. See, too, that 

 wings are smoothly folded, for there is not a breed so de- 

 pendent upon minor details to secure for them the blue rib- 

 bon. Keep them clean, with green lawn and clean dust 

 baths, furnishing nature's foods that are found in the fol- 

 lowing proportion: Fifteen per cent meat as found in beef 

 scraps, dessicated fish or green cut beef bones; twenty-five 

 per cent vegetables, the best of all being green clover; sixty 

 per cent being grain in the proportion of fifteen per cent 

 corn — balance in oats, wheat and buckwheat. 



They are prolific layers of eggs. After they reach six 

 months of age it is hard to keep them in exhibition condi- 

 tion, so that May hatch chicks will generally prove the best 

 exhibition specimens in January and males hatched a month 

 earlier, their stronger mates. But the poulterer who cares 

 nothing for the exhibition, and those who cater for the egg 

 trade for hatching, will do well to mate up in large numbers, 

 and as fast as the females become broody to allow them to 

 incubate a sitting of eggs, for the rest will save you many a 

 death in your breeding yards and enable you to send out 

 larger and nicer colored eggs to your trade; which you will 

 find will be appreciated, and besides all this the eggs will 

 hatch nicer and stronger chicks for it. 



The difference in time to break them up or set and allow 

 them to bring up a clutch of chicks will not be over two 

 weeks; for they invariably go to laying when chicks are two 

 weeks old. It is nature's rest, after which they lay a larger 

 litter of larger eggs than if broken up to secure a second 

 litter before allowing them to sit. I. K. FELCH. 



