374 COMMERCIAL POULTRY RAISING 



pure-bred male to. mate with your pure-bred females, and later 

 find that the two strains failed to nick properly. That is, the 

 mating may throw offspring with defective combs, dispropor- 

 tion or poor color, which will take several generations of special 

 breeding to eliminate. In short, the advent of new blood is a 

 speculation. 



A better way to introduce new blood is to take two years to 

 do it, and experiment with individuals. Purchase a few hens of 

 the desired strain and mate them to your best males, or secure 

 a couple of outside males and mate them to your best females; 

 then study their offspring for a year, and if satisfactory, mate the 

 new blood to the balance of the flock. 



There is no evidence to prove that line-breeding initiates de- 

 generacy, providing reasonable care is exercised each year in 

 selecting only vigorous breeders, and there is a large number of 

 fowls from which to choose. The danger becomes even more 

 remote if two divisions of the same blood are kept going year 

 after year. This consists of keeping two distinct strains or 

 matings on the same farm, both of which have a common an- 

 cestry, but which grow farther apart every year. 



Every season the males of one line are mated to the females of 

 the other line, and vice versa, these lines having been started by 

 mating the best male to the best female, and continuing the 

 second generation by mating the original male to his daughters, 

 or the original hen to the son. Proceeding in a similar manner 

 for the third generation, the original male is mated to grand- 

 daughters and the original hen to her grandson, which practically 

 eliminates from each line its original respective sire or dam. It 

 is difficult to explain this system of line-breeding in writing, but 

 if you will make a chart of it and get down to actual figures, you 

 will soon see that it is very simple. 



Cross-Breeding. — ^Some time in the career of every poultry- 

 man there is the temptation to cross-breed with a view to im- 

 proving certain qualities. In most instances the crossing of 

 two pure breeds is a mistake. The appearance alone of a flock 

 of cross-bred fowls when compared with the pure breeds whence 



