•84 MAKING POULTRY PAY 



and if the entire flock is strong, healthy, and of a good 

 strain, the chickens will be a pretty fair lot, and will 

 contain among them, not perhaps a world beater, but 

 5ome pretty good birds for competition — and above all, 

 they will be pleasing to look at, so that the breeder 

 may not be ashamed of them. — [E. O. Roessle in The 

 Country Gentleman. 



Mating for Size — The male bird undoubtedly ex- 

 ercises a certain amount of influence in regard to the 

 size and shape of the offspring ; but to attempt to rem- 

 edy — as so many amateurs do — the deficiency of size 

 in their st-ock by the purchase of an extra large cock, 

 is the wrong way to go to work. The hen has far 

 more influence over both the size and shape of the 

 progeny than the male has. Take a broad-shouldered, 

 ■deep-breasted cock, and mate with narrow-shouldered 

 hens, deficient, also, in breast, and the result of such a 

 union will be but little, if any improvement. Had, 

 however, the tables been turned, and the hens pos- 

 sessed the size instead of the cock, far greater improve- 

 ment would appear in the offspring. It will be found 

 that by breeding from large hens, and a cock deficient 

 in this respect, that the pullets produced show a far 

 greater improvement than is observable in the cockerels, 

 and it is only by continuing the process of breeding 

 from large hens that the cockerels will far outdistance 

 the original cock. There is no question but the best 

 plan is to have size and shape on both sides ; but if a 

 deficiency must occur on one side or the other, do not 

 let it be on that of the hens. It is fully as important 

 to have mature fowls of vigorous constitution. We 

 "believe that many of the poor hatches and loss of 

 young stock can be traced to the use of overfat and 

 immature breeding stock. In our own practice, we 

 aim to mate a well-developed cockerel with yearling 

 or two year old hens of large size and a cock with 



