220 THE AMERICAN BREEDS OF POULTRY 



out of a wonderful hen and is not merely a faulty colored exhibition 

 cockerel. 



The best producers of gorgeously striped males are females whose 

 necks are striped with black, not penciled; and around those stripes 

 should be an edging of bright red, not orange or lemon. Such a 

 female will be stippled in the back or coarsely penciled, and cannot 

 win in the best shows. Ancestry again determines the value of such 

 a female, for a plainbred Partridge Wyandotte hen may fail in pencil- 

 ing, yet be an inferior breeder of cockerels. A little dark color in 

 the shanks should never condemn a cockerel-breeding hen. She 

 should be mated to the brightest color type of exkibition male that 

 you have. This is the cockerel mating. The pullet mating is com- 

 posed of the finest marked females mated to the pullet-bred male 

 above described. 



The standard or single maters are usually partly double maters, 

 although they do not so state. The facts are that they pick as good 

 colored male as they can whose dam was a nicely penciled female, 

 and they mate him to some well penciled females and some stipple- 

 backed, striped-neck females. The former produce a fair share of 

 good pullets and the latter produce a fair proportion of good cock- 

 erels. This kind of mating frequently amounts to mating the best 

 birds together, and accounts for the mediocre flocks of the average 

 small breeders and the fact that they have to reinforce their stock 

 with a high-class purchased bird from time to time. 



Possibilities of single mating. Of course we concede that a super- 

 breeder can breed striping in the male and penciling in the female 

 from the same blood. Single mating, however, requires more time 

 and thought than double mating. The easy way to produce what you 

 want in any variety is by double mating. The easy way to fail is to 

 single mate. A breeder who has the ability can duplicate what 

 George W. Mitchell has done in Partridge Cochins, but he will have 

 to "put his whole being into the work," as Mr. Mitchell would say. 



Twenty-five years ago Mr. Mitchell was told that Partridge Cochins 

 could not be bred by single mating — that it would always be necessary 

 to maintain a separate family for the production of black-breasted, 

 clearly striped cockerels, and another distinct family to produce finely 

 penciled pullets. He did not think so, and he has since so conclusively 

 proved the possibility of single mating that his results in breeding 

 will be cited through years to come whenever an example and inspira- 

 tion are needed. 



At the Boston show, January, 1920, Mr. Mitchell, seventy years, 

 old, exhibited his wonderful Partridge Cochins. There had not been 

 a drop of new blood introduced into this strain since 1894 — a period 

 of twenty-six years. We have Mr. Mitchell's word for it and we 

 believe him. Some years ago Mr. Mitchell thought that he should 

 infuse some new blood, and asked Frank Sewell, who was going to 



