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CHAPTER X. 
COMMENCING A STRAIN. 
EVERY show “season” invariably produces a certain number of new fanciers, who come forward 
to take the place of the old, and to extend still further the knowledge and love of fowls. The success 
of these different individuals, however, varies very widely. Some few continue year after year to 
maintain and establish a prominent position ; but we have often been amused to observe the 
numbers who, having purchased the most successful birds of the season, appear to carry all before 
them for a few months, and then retire again into oblivion — ultimately, in all probability, to give up 
the pursuit altogether in disgust. The number of those who in this manner commence “ poultry- 
fancying,” and then retire from it with more or less loss, is very great, and has given rise to a very 
common opinion that the cultivation of fancy varieties must inevitably be a losing concern ; but we 
have no hesitation in saying that such an opinion is altogether groundless. In many cases, where 
all operations are carried on regardless of cost ; where the houses and yards are of a substantial, 
showy, and expensive character, and the whole is regarded rather as an amusement for the opulent 
than with any reference to pecuniary results, it may be regarded as a fair return for even first-rate 
breeding if the receipts and payments be found to balance at the end of the year : with any other 
pursuit, carried on in a similar manner, this is the best result which can be expected. But if 
management and economy be studied, as well as the stock, fancy poultry will yield a very fair 
profit, and there are not a few real amateurs who actually do reap a very considerable pecuniary 
return from it, even apart from the few well-known breeders who derive their entire income from 
the cultivation of fancy fowls. 
It is therefore worth while to consider the reason of so great a difference in the results of the 
same pursuit; for profit and loss do not depend upon accident or chance, but are necessary 
consequences of wise or unwise methods of procedure. And to put the matter as tersely and 
simply as possible, we are satisfied from long and careful observation that the losers and the gainers 
in the poultry-fancy might in almost every case be as correctly described by the terms of the buyers 
and the breeders ; or yet again as those persons who are merely exhibitors , or such as are fanciers 
in the true sense of that term. 
There is a large class of persons who buy and exhibit fowls merely from a feeling of pride in 
their possession ; not that they love or care for them in reality, but from the same feeling which 
leads a wealthy man with no love whatever for art to buy and hang on his walls the most expensive 
pictures. There may be at first a slight passing interest in the birds, but that is all ; and when the 
fowls which have been thus purchased regardless of expense die, or get out of condition from 
overshowino the interest conies to an end along with the success, for their progeny is in all 
probability “worthless. Disgust follows, and another so-called fancier “gives up” a pursuit which 
he never really entered into at all. 
We shall however suppose that from some cause or other a real mterest in and love for fowls 
has been awakened, and that the amateur desires to enter upon the cultivation of some one or two 
