R.I. REDS AS EXHIBITION FOWLS 



for birds at the highest prices as the demand is always in 

 excess of the supply and I believe always will be. I had to 

 reject orders last year for more than a thousand pullets for 

 good utility stock after selling all I could spare. 



Prices for exhibition stock have advanced wonderfully 

 in the last five years. Five or six years ago, $25 would buy 

 about the best male that was for sale. Now $100 and $200 

 is asked for the choicest specimens. I believe successful 

 breeders will find a demand for the Reds at as good prices 

 as are paid for any breed in the world within a few years. 

 The more generally known and popular they become, the 

 keener the competition, the higher the prices will go; the 

 same as it is today with all of the popular older breeds. 

 Finally, after taking into consideration all their strong as 



27 



well as weak points, I would strongly recommend the Reds 

 with their specified, combined standard, for ideal utility and 

 fancy. 



In conclusion I shall give the history of a little Red 

 orphan. One day in the spring after a hard rain, a lady in 

 our town found a little chick lying in the grass almost dead. 

 She took it home, warmed it up, fed and nursed it back to 

 health. It turned out to be a Rhode Island Red pullet and 

 in a few months she proved her Rhode Island Red blood. 

 An accurate account was kept of her laying for one year and 

 her record was 212 eggs. This pullet with her record, was 

 exhibited at the Willoughby Fanciers Club show, January 

 1909, and won the blue ribbon for female of any variety 

 showing the largest egg record for one year. 



TEN YEARS WITH S. C. RHODE ISLAND REDS 



EXPERIENCED BREEDER GIVES HIS IDEA OF R. I. RED SHAPE AND COLOR-HOW TO 

 MATE AND LINE BREED— AN INTERESTING DIAGRAM— SOME HINTS TO JUDGES 



OSCAR E. MILES 



I HAVE bred the Single Comb Reds on rather a large 

 scale for the past ten years and with each year's ex- 

 perience I find that there is much for me to learn. 

 The Reds are the result of at least forty years of 

 out-crossing. The founders of the breed introduced new 

 blood only from the male side, using the red male and paying 

 little or no attention to the color of the female, which caused 

 a number of different colors and shades. Their desire was 

 to produce a breed having strong vitality and which were 

 great egg layers and they succeeded to a wonderful degree, 

 for there is certainly no breed of fowls more vigorous and, in 

 my opinion, they will produce as many eggs in the entire 

 year, when properly handled, as any breed of chickens in 

 existence. 



Laying Test 



At this point I might say that a number of years ago I 

 personally made a test of the egg laying quality of the Reds 

 together with White Wyandottes, Golden Wyandottes, 

 White Leghorns, White and Barred Plymouth Rocks. The 

 test commenced the first or March and lasted until the first 

 of June. All the birds were, as far as I could see, in the 

 same condition; and there were about fifty females of each 

 breed in the test. All were under the same feed and care. 

 The result was that the Reds laid the most eggs, the Barred 

 Rocks second. They were 25 per cent ahead of the Leghorns 

 and 10 per cent ahead of the Barred Rocks. At no time did 

 the Leghorns lay as many eggs in one day, until the early 

 part of May when the weather was quite warm, when they 

 ran a Httle ahead. I then sold off all the other breeds and 

 kept only the Barred Rocks and Reds, which I still breed, 

 I have long since learned that "the hen that laid was the 

 hen that paid." 



Rhode Island Red Color 



The continuous out-crossing and no attention being 

 given to the selection of the females by the founders of the 

 breed, established such characteristics along the color line 

 that it has been hard to breed the Reds true to color. Es- 

 pecially is this true of the females. When I started with 

 the Reds, I had little or no trouble in getting good colored 

 inales, but the females were extremely bad. For the first 

 few years I could not get more than ten or fifteen per cent 

 good colored females. This I discovered was due, to a great 

 extent, to using males that were too dark and in which there 

 was too much variance in shade of color between the male 



and females; but, by careful selection and mating male and 

 females that were more uniform in color, very much better 

 results were obtained. It is always safer to darken the 

 color of the birds by degree. One of the many things to 

 remember when we select our breeders is that an even shade 

 of color (in the female) though lighter than we want, makes a 

 much safer breeder than a darker female that is not so even. 



Line Breeding 



Careful line breeding to a certain extent is beneficial 

 but must be done with understanding. Let us ever strive 

 to produce even colored birds and at the same time use 

 breeders of strong, rich red, that are full of lustre, for this 

 is the true Rhode Island Red color. The black, which is 

 required by the Standard, can be handled successfully, and 

 is so done, by single matings, and right here let me say that 

 I sincerely hope the Standard will never be so changed that 

 it will make it necessary in breeding the Reds, to use double 

 matings, for when that time comes we will ruin the breed. 



The ticking in the hackles of the females is desired, and 

 at the same time the male should be free from black in this 

 section. The black in the wing is largely responsible for 

 this ticking. I have found that mating the male with a 

 strictly Standard wing, with females that were not so strong 

 in this section, is the safer mating. When male and female 

 both have an excessive amount of black in wing, we will, 

 in nearly all cases, get striping in the hackles of the male and 

 too much black in the female. If we watch this section 

 closely, together with the other important ones, we can make 

 our mating such as to produce an exhibition male and female 

 from the same pair of chickens. If I may be allowed a per- 

 sonal illustration, I shall refer to some of the birds I showed 

 at the Pittsburg show 1909. My first prize hen was, I 

 thought, a very good specimen. She was as red as a pullet. 

 Her weakest section was her wing, not so much black in it 

 as we should like for a high class show hen, but her other 

 good sections carried her through. She was ticked in hackle. 

 I mated her last year to the first Columbus cockerel, a bird 

 with almost a perfect Standard wing, with the result that 

 this hen produced the first cockerel and the first pen cock- 

 erel at the same show, at Pittsburg, and two of their sisters 

 were in the first pen and they were nicely ticked in hackles. 

 This certainly proves to me that double mating is not a 

 necessity. 



