THE BREEDER— HIS PLACE AND HIS WORK 39 



the conjlruclive improvers of our stock. They bear a vital relation- 

 ship to the great poultry industry. They deserve much credit and 

 every encouragement. 



The problem of production rests with the farmer and commercial 

 poultryman. The breeder's function, his excuse for being, is to breed 

 stock birds that have a hereditary capacity for producing in the least 

 time and at the least expense the maximum of what is required, 

 coupled with uniformity of size, shape, color and temperament, so 

 that a clutch of chicks may be depended upon to grow evenly, to 

 mature about the same time, to attain about the same size and type, 

 and to possess about the same temperament. That is a man's job, 

 and the man who fills it occupies a position alike honorable and 

 useful. He must be remunerated for the thought and patient effort 

 w-hich he devotes to this work; so birds of good breeding, like silk, 

 cannot be purchased at the prices of calico. 



The qualifications of a breeder. Who can become a constructive 

 breeder? Not every man, any more than every farmer can become 

 a livestock breeder. Many grain farmers become live stock feeders 

 in order to secure a satisfactory crop rotation and economically utilize 

 corn roughages that they grow as a by-product of their grain. But, 

 as feeders, their business is to convert feed into meat, and their 

 relations are with the shippers and commission houses. 



To be a breeder, one must needs be a man among men. This 

 does not mean lavish expenditures for entertainment during shows. 

 It means the possession of the breeder's instinct; a sympathetic under- 

 standing akin to affection for our dumb friends, even those of the 

 feathered type; an exalted aspiration to be a producer and to bring 

 forth something better, and withal the patience to "carry on." Such 

 a man reads a little, experiments some, and thinks a great deal. 



Such a man is a fancier. He ever strives to improve his own 

 stud, and seeks and enjoys the company of other stock improvers. 

 He goes to a poultry show and fails to hear the roosters crowing 

 in the noisy, merry place because he is intensely interested in the 

 birds themselves. At his own home he somehow feels that the hens 

 are not laying eggs especially for someone's breakfast, but rather to 

 reproduce their own species, and all their lives he mates and cares 

 for his birds with a vievf to their breeding possibilities. 



His poultry plant is not a factory where hen machines are kept 

 solely to convert raw material or feed into a finished product, meat 

 or eggs. It is a place where the lives of the fowls are marked, first, 

 by the period of embryonic development, then the period of actual 

 growth, and, lastly, the period of reproduction. 



There is a difference between production and reproduction. One 

 is the function of a relentless machine; the other is a process by 

 which a new organism is generated from that already existing and 

 the perpetuation of the species assured. 



The stock becomes plastic in the hands of the breeder. There is 



