86 



THE ASIATICS. 



BREEDING FOR COLOR. 

 In breeding Black Langshans for the show room I find 

 more difficulty in getting them free from purple barring in 

 plumage than from any other defect, yet I find that in mating 

 a rich greenish colored male with a dark slate under-color, to 

 a female equally rich in color, I get nearly all good colored 

 birds. I believe that when the parent stock is full of purple 

 the offspring will be the same. I am not a believer in the 

 theory that the sun or dry winds produce the purple barring. 

 While it may affect the surface color by turning it brown or 

 rusty, yet I have had some very fine colored Langshans that 

 were as free from purple barring as they grow run out in the 

 hot sun the entire season and they never had their color 

 affected in the least. 



One thing almost convinces me that the hot sun does 

 not cause this purple barring in the plumage. It is a case 

 of a bird that won first at the Northeast Missouri Show. 

 This bird was from a sitting of eggs that I gave to a friend 

 late in the season of 1900. Several cockerels were hatched 



j^^_ from the sitting, but 

 the bird in question 

 was always the best 

 in every way except 

 in color, which was 

 almost as bad as 

 could be, and he was 

 sold with a lot of 

 mixed stock as com- 

 mon poultry to a sec- 

 ond party. The lat- 

 ter part of last sum- 

 mer when passing by 

 the place where the 

 cockerel was, I jok- 

 ingly remarked that 

 I would give fifty 

 cents for him. A few 

 days later the neigh- 

 bor came to see me 

 with the bird, saying, 

 "Here is your roos- 

 ter; give me the fifty 

 cents." The bird had 

 been allowed to 

 rough it and had had no care whatever; had been run- 

 ning out in the burning hot sun, and yet he molted 

 out as good in color and as nearly free from pur- 

 ple as any cock bird I have ever seen. He scored 94%, by 

 Hewes, after receiving an extra cut for a slightly frosted 

 comb. I have always been able to produce some extra good 

 colored Langshans. Not all of them, however, are good in 

 color and free from purple, but if the hot dry winds were 

 the cause of so much purple barring in Langshans, why 

 should it not affect all alike under the same conditions? 



Three years ago I raised exceptionally good colored 

 Langshans, but among them were some that were as full of 

 purple as they could be. That winter I exhibited three 

 cockerels and a number of pullets at the Missouri State 

 Show, one of each sex being passed by Russell, with only 

 one-half point cut on color, and I found him none too easy 

 to please, as he is a pretty good cutter. These good colored 

 birds were raised in the same yards and under the same 

 care and conditions that those were that had purple bars. 



I find that the color of Langshans has been very much 

 improved since I first began breeding them, and especially 

 since the revision of the last standard, which at first fixed 

 the punishment for purple in any section at one point, but 

 which was afterwards changed to read from one-half to one 



A First Prize Black I^angshan Cock. 

 Owned by John Hettich. 



point. There is no other defect that puts a Langshan out of 

 competition in the show room as quickly as bad color or 

 purple barring, and many an otherwise common bird has 

 won a place simply on color. In breeding for color I am 

 convinced that the male exercises the greater influence. 



White feathers in plumage of Black Langshans I have 

 always contended should disqualify, except where it appears 

 in toe feathering. I watch this very closely and find that 

 it does not accompany the best or most brilliant colored 

 plumage, but on the contrary I find that most of it appears 

 in my poorest colored (the purple barred or the dull rusty 

 black) birds. These show more white and nearly always 

 have white or gray tips on wing flights. 



Many an otherwise good specimen, having a little white 

 in some part of the plumage, which under the old standard 

 would have been discarded, is now put into the breeding 

 pen and the result is a lot of Langshans with white-tipped 

 feathers. It was Judge Wale, by the way, one of the best 

 Langshan judges in America, who said that the only way 

 to get rid of white in plumage was not to breed it. I men- 

 tion Judge Wale because from him I received my first in- 

 structions in breeding Langshans and his lessons have done 

 me a great deal of good. I have and always will have for 

 him a kindly feeling. 



I enjoy telling of my first experience with the judge. 

 When I began breeding Langshans, I started with what I 

 thought were some fairly good hens bought in this country, 

 and a ten dollar cockerel, bought of a New York state 

 breeder. Late that fall Judge Wale came to my place to 

 score my birds and pick some winners for a show in the 

 adjoining county. I had them all up and banded, expecting 

 at least 125 out of the 150 I had would show scores of 95 

 each. The first ten or fifteen that the judge picked up went 

 out of the window. I asked him what was the matter with 

 them and why he did not score them. "Didn't you see those 

 white feathers?" he asked. Then he found a pullet that 

 he considered very good. She had no white tips and good 

 under-color, and then some more went out of the window, 

 and when he got through I had just thirteen scored birds 

 out of my one hundred and fifty. I was a pretty sick en- 

 thusiast. Had my ten dollar cockerel and my geod looking 

 hens been free from white in plumage I would not have 

 had one-tenth of the white-tipped feathers. I asked Judge 

 Wale if it would be wrong to pull out the white feathers (I 

 was younger then), and he was honest and said yes. Since 

 then I have asked other judges the same question and they 

 always smile. I will never forget my first lesson on Lang- 

 shans, nor my teacher. 



I do believe that in breeding for dark under-color, and 

 the brilliant greenish surface color, we often get red 

 feathers in hackle or in back or on butt of wings. I have 

 never seen a red feather in a very dull or purple bird, but 

 always in the most brilliant plumage, and always in the 

 males. I have never seen a pullet with a red feather. Last 

 season I discovered two red feathers in the back of what I 

 regarded a very promising cockerel. I sold a sitting of eggs 

 from the yard he was in to a breeder in this locality and he 

 has now out of that hatch as fine styled, big Langshan cock- 

 erel as one could wish to see. If he had not a few red feath- 

 ers he would be worth $15 to anybody for a breeder. These 

 red feathered cockerels were sired by one of the best colored 

 birds I ever saw; a brilliant green bird, scoring 95% by 

 Hewes, and receiving a cut of only one-half point on color 

 of plumage. Several years ago I purchased the first prize 

 cockerel at the Mid-Continental show of Kansas City. That 

 cockerel received the highest score of any Langshan male I 

 ever saw or heard of— 97 points by Wale, who was one of the 

 judges at this show. He did not get a single cut on color. 



