Performance of English Standard 

 Runners 



CHAPTER IV 



Many breeders of the Indian Runner have been caUing at- 

 tention to the proud fact that Indian Runners won the Australian 

 Contest prize with a marvelous record, as announced a year ago. 

 But the majority of them have not a shadow of right to use this 

 as a talking point for their birds, since it was not the American 

 Standard Runner which made these records. 



Believing that this was the fact, I wrote to Mr. Dunnicliffe, 

 Organizing Secretary, in connection with the Hawkesbury con- 

 tests, asking him what kind of Runners were in these Australian 

 contests. He very kindly wrote me the facts, which supported 

 my belief. These are his exact words: "The Indian Runners 

 kept in Australia have been bred from stock imported from Eng- 

 land. The English Standard is followed by all our poultry clubs 

 and shows. As is the case elsewhere, there are people here who 

 breed Rouen blood into them to improve the size, but any trace of 

 this blood in them would knock them out in the shows. In the 

 matter of laying, we find that any infusion of Rouen blood de- 

 preciates them, and the best laying records have been put up by 

 birds of pure, English blood, selected here for many years for 

 their laying capacity." 



If I have not, on the other pages of this book, made it suffi- 

 ciently clear that I have no wish to coerce the fancier who likes 

 the solid fawn and white birds into raising anything else, I want 

 to do so now. But, I have seen his birds where he shows his best. 

 I know them to have been often inferior to the original type in 



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