MATING AND SELECTION OF BREEDING STOCK ; 149 



One of the best ways to keep the sex even is to cull out the 

 smaller inferior males and remate their mates with young 

 cocks of size and quality. This can be done without loss of squab 

 production, if the remating is done when there are no eggs 

 or young that would be neglected or when there is but one egg 

 or one squab that can be transferred to another nest. See 

 articles "When But One Egg Hatches" and "How To Tell the 

 Period of Incubation," pages 155 and 156. 



WHAT TO DO WITH ODD COCKS 



A good method is to have a separate pen for odd cocks and 

 nothing but good, high grade cocks should be kept in that pen. 

 The small and runt>' ones should be disposed of or turned loose 

 or into soup. Then as fast as your young females get old 

 enough to mate, they should be turned into the pen of odd cocks, 

 or a still better plan is to select special birds from your odd 

 cork pen and put them in equal numbers with young females 

 in another pen. As soon as mated each pair should be taken 

 out and put in with other breeders. This method will cause 

 the female to mate up a little earlier than they would with 

 young cocks and will enable you to grade your flock up by 

 selecting your best odd males for your young females. 



You can also draw from your pen of odd cocks to replace small 

 and inferior males that you notice from time to time in your 

 plant. It is better to dispose of any inferior odd male even if 

 you have to give it away, than to keep it, for it only consumes 

 feed and will never be of any value for breeding purposes. 



You will always have more cocks than hens for breeding pur- 

 poses, so why keep inferior odd cocks at a dead loss and expense? 

 Keep only the extra good ones and turn the others loose, give 

 them away to people that might be able to use them, or make 

 soup out of them, but don't keep them. 



BEST METHOD TO IMPROVE THE QUALITY OF A FLOCK 



Most people start at the. wrong end or backwards to improve 

 the quality of « flock of breeders. If a majority of a flock of 

 birds was perfect, it might he better to f eparate the perfect birds, 

 then discard the others, but as a perfect bird is practically im- 

 possible, and a large majority of every flock is far from peffectj 

 it is best to start in at the inferior end to improve the flock: 



