84 POULTRY CULTURE 



length of back and breast, and length of legs. The eyes 

 must be of proper color and the comb of proper size and shape. 

 They must stand squarely on the legs and the legs wide 

 apart. The plumage should be of proper shade or color. 

 The birds in one pen should all be of the same type and color. 

 See that the tails are carried at the right angle. Do not have 

 quarrelsome hens in the pen. Such a hen should not be used 

 for breeding purposes, of if her good qualities overshadow this 

 defect then it is better to mate her alone. 



The color problem is one of the difficult items in breeding. 

 The three primary colors in the poultry-breeders spectrum are 

 white, black, and red; and when a breeder understands the 

 relative values of these to one another he has mastered the 

 first principle of color breeding, and can, with practice, pro- 

 duce almost any desired shade of color in the plumage of the 

 fowl. Physical science teaches us that black is not, strictly 

 speaking, a color, but that the word is applied to the absence 

 of all color; also that white is not a color, but is the result of 

 a combination of seven primary colors; for the poultry breeder 

 it is convenient to consider both black and white as actual 

 colors, and to place them alongside of red. Working with 

 these three as primary colors, the breeder has produced the 

 many beautiful shades and markings which characterize our 

 numerous varieties of domestic fowl. 



Red is the most persistent of the three colors. Accepting 

 the view that all domestic fowls are descended from the 

 common ancestor, G alius Bankiva, it is not surprising that 

 this should be so, for in the male of this wild ancestor of om- 

 domestic races red is the predominating color and completely 

 overshadows black, the only other color in his plumage. Thus 

 we get at the reason why red should be the most permanent 

 of all colors in the plumage of fowls, and we also see why 

 black should be more permanent than other hues, it being 

 the color of secondary importance in the wild ancestor. 



White plumage is probably produced in one of three ways: 

 There can be but httle doubt that the true source of white as 

 a fowl color is albinoism, and the proof of this is that fowls 

 coming as "sports" or albinos from parents which are black, 

 or of some other color, are much naore permanent in shade 



