16 LESSONS IN POULTRY KEEPING — SECOND SERIES. 



LESSON II, 



Some Common Phenomena of Breeding. 



IN the last lesson we discussed the subject of heredity in its relation to systematic laelhoils 

 of breeding to special standards. In this lesson we are to consider various {ibeuoruetia uf 

 heredity as they practically concern the breeder in his work. 

 Since the selling and buying of eggs for hatching purposes has become so general, the 

 old question, " Which is the mother of the chick — the hen that laid the eg;;, or the hen ihat 

 hatched it?" has become of less interest than the question, — Which is the breeder of the chick, 

 the man who produced and mated the stock from which it came, or the man who hatched and 

 reared it? 



Without attempting to make a final answer to that question, let me say that the production of 

 fine fowls requires a combination of skill in mating and skill in growing. To produce tlie 

 finest stock we must have first of all parent stock of fine quality, properly mated, but the 

 product will not equal or even approach the excellence of its ancestors unless it is properlv 

 bandied as it grows. It is Important that the reader should keep this fact constantly in 

 mind both when applying principles of breeding, and when looking for confirmation of those 

 principles In the results of his matings, for if the conditions under which a fowl is grown are 

 unsatisfactory the result may be a bird very diflferent in shape, color of plumage, vigor, etc., 

 from what it might have been under conditions providing for the full development of Its possi- 

 bilities ; and conditions adverse to full natural development are apparently not limited in their 

 effects to failure to fully develop the qualities directly transmitted from the parent stock; but 

 there Is some reason to suppose that features eliminated from a stock by careful selection some- 

 times reappear in ill nourished, ill cared for chickens, when tliey would not have deve/oped 

 under better conditions. Such a point as this is of course diflicuit to demonstrate, for we can- 

 not show positively in what way any given individual fowl might have developed difl"erently 

 under different conditions. But comparison of chicks from the same breeding stock, hatched 

 and reared by different parties, often shows them so different that it is hard to believe they 

 could have been produced from the same parents. 



Hence, for a proper appreciation of the laws of heredity, we must discriminate between 

 results as found In well developed specimens and results as found in ill developed specimens. 



Prepotency in Breeding. 



As a rule, pure bred fowls transmit to their progeny a much greater proportion of their 

 Individual excellence than mongrel fowls, and pure bred fowls that have been carefully bred 

 In line transmit their qualities to their offspring more surely than those that have been bred 

 in a haphazard way. This is because of the cumulative breeding back of them, and is easily 

 explained by the general law of heredity given in the last lesson. 



