566 



THE GARDEN AND FIELD. 



May, iyi4 



perimcnt Station, can, we think, 

 doubt that in the unequal though 

 proportional transmition of the 

 character of "high ' laying Ijy th« 

 males, lies one of the principal se- 

 crets of poultry breeding. 



— The Hanbury I'en. — 



It would be eas}- to cjuote many 

 instances in which The Rule has 

 had to lean pretty heavily on The 

 Kick, but there is one quoted in 

 the same paper which appears to 

 us to be a particularly fortunate 

 or unfortunate illustration. It 

 reads as follows : — 



A Bendigo paper states that two 

 McKenzie cockerels were each 

 mated with eight hens, and the one 

 lot of pullets went into the Ben- 

 Lii,^o competition and the other 

 to Burnlev. It is interesting to 

 note the wide difierence in the 

 scores of the two pens. The birds 

 at Bendigo look liKe getting 1,650 

 or 1,660, while those, at Burnley, 

 with 19 days to go only had 1,296 

 on the slate — a marked difierence, 

 which shows that in this latter 

 mating the " nick " was not 

 there. 



— Deceptive Equality. — 



Un the face of it, we have here 

 two sets of birds which are ap- 

 j)arenily equal, 3'et they give very 

 different results. They were not 

 therefore really equal. Where was 

 the inequality ? It is reasonable 

 to supjiose that it was not in the 

 mother hens, for we read elsewhere 

 that they had been tested, it is 

 not ])robable that it was in the 

 pullets themselves, as far as could 

 be observed, for Mr. Hanbury 

 would, if anything, send the better 

 ])en to the more important compe- 

 tition. There is nothing to indi- 

 cate that there was any apparent 

 difierence in the cocks, but — and 

 this is the vital point — you cannot 

 test a male bird, except by his 

 pullets. By the light of these re- 

 sults these males were different in 

 their powers of transmission. Read 

 the aljove history of the " Han- 

 bury " pens, on its face value, by 

 the rule and vovi get nowhere, or 

 the hump. Read it by the amend- 

 ment, and you get a reasonable ex- 

 planation. One male had the pow- 

 er to transmit the character— 

 " high ' hi vin , the other had jiot. 

 All the hens had the power to 

 transmit " good " laying. There 

 are, of course, others, we merely 

 sugcrest one on the facts as re- 

 corded. There is the mvsterious 

 " Nick " to which " Ilard.shell " 

 pins his faith. To us this has al- 

 ways ajipeared like X, the un- 

 known ((uantity in mathematiics. 

 Whist players will recognise its 



similarity to a small trump — when 

 vou don't know what to do, play 

 it. It is surel}- a very handy 

 thing to have about the house 

 when you talk or write of stock 

 breeding ; for it covers a multi- 

 tude of perplexities. 



(To be Continued j. 



HANBURY 'S BENDIGO LEG- 

 HORNS. 



These birds, together with Gill's 

 Burnley dittos, are probably the 

 most talked of fowl in the world 

 to-day. European and American 

 conferences of experts, etc., will 

 discuss them as seriously and with 

 quite as much practical good as if 

 they were another Balkan war or 

 IMexican trouble. What a great 

 performance it is, yet how simple 

 — on paper. No long experience, 

 no extensive runs, no • expensive 

 stock, no mysterious methods, no 

 rigid selection, no patent feeding, 

 no anvthing unusual. You don't 

 even have to go to a reliable 

 breeder, you just buy 24 dozen 

 eggs from a friend " who is al- 

 ways praising his I/eghorns," and 

 even the most friendless beginner 

 has at least a dozen friends who 

 fill that bill. We gather the fore- 

 going from an interesting account 

 of the " Hanbury " birds by "Hot- 

 spur, " in a recent " Iveader." Boil- 

 ed down, Mr. Hanbury, a couple of 

 years ago, bought 24 dozen eggs 

 from a most obliging friend. He 

 hatched them in an incubator, and 

 reared 60 pullets, from which he 

 selected 16, these he mated with 

 two McKenzie cockerels. The re- 

 sulting chicks were hatched on 

 October 8th, 1912, and reared un- 

 der cover (the whole area of Mr. 

 Hanburv's poultry yard is appar- 

 ently only 66 by 100) and six were 

 sent to Bendigo with the amazing 

 result that is now known aU over 

 Au.stralia and foreign | ;uts. Six 

 pullets were also sent to Burnley, 

 hut that is another story. The 

 lesson is plain and there certainly 

 ought to be a great run on 

 " friends who are are always prais- 

 ing their Leghorns." It should be 

 mentioned that this particular 

 friend appears to have had deal- 

 ings with various "reliable" breed- 

 ers so after all that often abused 

 individual comes to his own and 

 all ends happily. 



NEW BURNLEY COMPETrWON. 



Mr. Hart evidently means to 

 get as much good out of the com- 

 ])etition under his charge as pos- 

 sible without losing any of its com- 

 petitive value. On the question of 

 wet and dry feed there is consider- 



able difference of opinion. Their* is 

 much to be said on both sides. 

 Mr. Hart is doing what "he can to 

 decide which is best, at all events 

 under Burnley conditions. In the, 

 present competition 50 pens of the 

 light breeds have been entered on 

 the Wet Mash ration and 19 pens 

 on the Dry Mash ration. In the 

 heavy breeds the figures are 20 Wet 

 Mash against 11 Dry Mash. 

 Messrs. Moritz in White Leghorns 

 and W. P. Eckerijian in the heavy 

 breeds are the only two from S.A. 

 This is something which should 

 have been done five years ago and 

 settled finally by now. Hawkes- 

 bury has done something but the 

 results, as far as they went, were 

 inconclusive. ^At Parafield it has 

 got as far as a position on the list 

 of " future " work as a possibility. 

 This is a great performance on Mr. 

 Pascoe's part, considering there 

 have been hundreds of co'mpetition 

 birds at Roseworthy for years past 

 to whom the question might have 

 been put. No harm could have 

 been done and possibly great good. 



THE HADLINGTON STANDARD 

 By his rejection recently of un- 

 derweight entries at the Hawkes- 

 burv Competition, Mr. HadUngton 

 caused considerable commotion in 

 the N.SAV. poultry camp. Beyond 

 the fact. that breeders had not been 

 given any special warning that 

 this quite reasonable application of 

 the not-fit-and-proper-representa- 

 tive-of-the-breed-rule, which has 

 hitherto been more honoured in the 

 breach than observance, at all 

 competitions, they do not appear 

 to ha\e had any ground for com. 

 plaint. When appealed to, prob- 

 ably for this reason, the Minister 

 of Agriculture suggested to Mr. 

 Hadlington that it might be bet- 

 ter not to apply this rule for this 

 year and this was agreed to. Mr. 

 Ashton, however, made it clear 

 that a standard of weight would 

 be rigi'dly enforced at the next 

 competition. The matter is one of 

 importance to poultry men in 

 N.S.W. and in other States, for 

 what Hawkesbury does in compe- 

 tition work to-day, the other 

 States will do to-morrow or when 

 thev wake up. Victoria, by the 

 wav, wakes up this year. Thanks 

 to ' Mr. Hart. Mr. Hadlington's 

 action brought to the front a ques- 

 tion which certainly needs settle- 

 ment and in doing this has accom- 

 plished his purpose. It should be 

 remembered that Hawkesbury is 

 not nm as a go-as-you-please re- 

 cord scramble, but on "the great- 

 est good for the greatest 

 number " lines. Mr. Iladlington 

 ton is, we think, to be congratu- 



