52 Hubbard's poultry secrets. 



female, but still I can mate the two high sheens together and 

 be free from any red in hackle. 



About five years ago Mr. Barnum, owner of Foxhurst Farm, 

 paid a big price for a bird that won high honors at New York. 

 I did not want to use the bird as a breeder as he was a stranger 

 to me. However, I mated this bird with five good females. 

 From this mating we produced red in the hackles ; consequently 

 in the fall I killed off every young bird I raised from the mat- 

 ing, and I never again placed that bird in the breeding yard. 



The method I use in mating Black Orpingtons to get the 

 beautiful green plumage in both cockerels and pullets is to mate 

 a male and female that have the same shade of green, or as 

 nearly as possible to match them. This will produce cockerels 

 and pullets of the beautiful green sheen from a single mating. 

 I learned to mate Black Orpingtons by killing a pair of crows ; 

 a male and a female. I noticed that the plumage of the two 

 birds was exactly the same shade of green. You could not pick 

 the male from the female in regard to color. This proved to 

 me that nature never intended that a high green sheen male 

 should be mated to a dull black female, but that the plumage 

 of the male and female should be of the same shade. I have 

 never yet found purple barring on crows' feathers. This also 

 proves that the purple barring does not come from mating a 

 high sheen male to a high sheen female. If it did, I would 

 have found barring in the plumage of the crows. 



I then went to work and experimented on the different 

 methods of caring and feeding and I proved to my own sat- 

 isfaction that seventy-five per cent, of the purple barring in 

 black plumage is caused by improper care and feeding, which 

 causes a stunt of feather growth. 



I will now give you some of the causes for stunted feather 

 growth : The first, over-feeding the chickens when they are 

 too young which often causes indigestion, therefore, throw- 



