CHAPTER XIX 



SILVER PENCILED WYANDOTTES 



A distinctively beautiful variety — Its origin — How to produce the finest 

 quality in males and females. 



The Silver Penciled Wyandotte is one of the most strikingly 

 colored fowls among the established races. Its inherited qualities 

 from the good old Dark Brahma, Silver Penciled Hamburg and Silver 

 Laoed Wyandotte are of the best. Its originator told of five pullets 

 laying 400 eggs in 100 days; of pullets hatched July 12 that were 

 up to the Standard weight of five and one-half pounds by January 12, 

 and laying; and of the cockerels that were well fleshed at all ages. 

 Unfortunately for the general popularity of the variety, the Silver 

 Penciled Wyandotte became a gentleman's breed. Year after year 

 for twenty-five years beautiful specimens, correct in every detail, have 

 been shown at the New York and Boston exhibitions; but the birds 

 have been in the hands of fanciers who bred for pleasure and per- 

 fection, and the stock was not distributed by the common business 

 methods of advertising and selling. 



The plumage color. The Silver Penciled Wyandotte male carries 

 a plumage of well defined and sharp contrasts. The breast, wing bar, 

 body and tail are black, with a greenish sheen to the black. The 

 wing bow is white on the surface. The neck and back are white, and 

 through the center of each hackle and saddle feather there runs a 

 black stripe which tapers to a point near the lower extremity of the 

 feather. No white shafting in the stripe or black edging on the 

 feather is wanted. 



The female is very differently colored from the male. She is 

 beautifully penciled. There is a tendency to a reddish-white ground 

 color, but it is less attractive than a steel-gray ground color, and 

 the latter offers the proper base for the crescentic bands of black 

 penciling which are the beauty of the female. 



We do not know why the female should be so differently marked 

 from the male. In this variety it is as if nature had performed a 

 miracle for the delight and fascination of the lovers of animated bird 

 life as seen in our races of domesticated poultry. 



Origin. The first matings were made in 1894 by Ezra Cornell, 

 Ithaca, New York, and he was helped in his work by George H. 

 Brackenbury, who lived near Auburn, New York, Both of these men 

 were keen students and accomplished breeders, which accounts for 

 the rapid progress made in blending Silver Laced Wyandottes, Dark 

 Brahmas and Silver Penciled Hamburgs intr a new and dependable 

 variety of the Wyandotte breed. Partridge or Golden Penciled Wyan- 



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