CHAPTER X 



PARTRIDGE PLYMOUTH ROCKS 



How typical Plymouth Rocks richly colored and beautifully penciled 



have been produced — Eastern and western breeders who have taken 



an active part in the development of the variety — How the birds are 



today being bred. 



To Geo. H. Brackenbury, Auburn. New York, Joseph McKeen, 

 Ormo, Wisconsin, and E. O. Thiem, Denison, Iowa, belongs the credit 

 of having conceived a fowl that would be intermediate between the 

 Cochin and the Leghorn and carry the beautiful golden penciling of 

 the Partridge Cochin, and each of them made their dreams come true 

 by producing Partridge Wyandottes. The work was started in the 

 SO's by these ditiferent breeders, and while Theim and McKeen co- 

 operated and secured some stock from Brackenbury, two rather dis- 

 tinct strains of Partridge Wyandottes were developed, one in the 

 east, the other in the west. 



The variety is started. The idea of a Partridge Plymouth Rock 

 came later. It originated with Dr. \\'. C. Crocker of Foxboro, Massa- 

 chusetts, who, after a lapse of more than thirty years, again took up 

 the breeding of poultry in 1899. determined to make what he had 

 visualized as a 3-oung breeder of Partridge Cochins, namely: a fowl 

 with the beautiful plumage of the Partridge Cochin but without its 

 sluggish disposition and excessive leg and toe feathering. He inspected 

 the flock of a Richard Hooper who was breeding a cross of Partridge 

 Cochins and Brown Leghorns. He then attended the Boston Poultry 

 Show, January, 1900, and while there found that Brackenbury and his 

 co-worker, Ezra Cornell, were showing the new Partridge Wj'andottes 

 which were derived from Partridge Cochin stock. 



Brackenbury was in attendance at the Boston show and Crocker 

 revealed to him his ambition to make a Partridge Plymouth Rock, 

 and later secured from Brackenburj- and Cornell all the single comb 

 sports from their Partridge Wyandottes. Crocker also secured a half- 

 blood Partridge Cochin male that Brackenbury had produced in some 

 of this experimental work, and he secured a male from Hooper's 

 flock, which was three parts Partridge Cochin and one part Brown 

 Leghorn. On the results of breeding these birds, Crocker wrote in 

 1904: 



From these matings I have bred some very fine specimens of a Partridge' 

 Plymouth Rock — an American type of fowl, with clear shanks and the beautiful 

 Partridge Cochin plumage. 



Crocker also developed a family of the variety in connection with 

 Hooper, using largely Partridge Cochin blood and introducing into it 



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