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The Illustrated Book of Poultry. 
of colour must be secured in the birds purchased as the foundation of a strain ; but hens may 
be purchased nearly bare of leg-feather if required, and the deficiency counteracted by mating with 
a vulture-hocked cock. (This and other technical terms will be explained later on.) Where there 
are several good chickens at command the stock should be purchased to suit them, viz., mature 
hens to mate with a cockerel, and a two-year old cock for the pullets already in hand. 
Having delayed buying till he can buy with judgment, it will be desirable now to provide if 
possible at least two unrelated pens,* and even more if accommodation can be provided for them. 
By so doing the beginner provides for future crosses, and can keep his strain in his own hands 
without any further cross for some years, when it should be well established and its qualities 
defined ; and year by year, if he proceeds with judgment, he will come nearer to his wishes. 
Otherwise, if the plan recommended by some of buying a cockerel every year for “fresh blood” 
be followed, the breeder never knows what he is doing ; and may spoil all after years of labour by 
an unlucky cross, which brings with it some lurking fault not visible in the bought bird, and 
therefore never suspected, but which contaminates the whole yard for that year. The danger of 
this is all the greater from such constant crossing preventing the home strain from acquiring any 
strong individual character of its own which can withstand the foreign influence ; whereas if it be 
carefully bred for some years, the strains of which ii; was first composed will amalgamate, and it 
will develop more or less defined features of its own, by which “Mr. X’s strain” will by degrees 
become known to other breeders. It is in fact the ideal or standard of the breeder which becomes 
stamped upon it ; and as the eye becomes trained to perceive the finer shades of difference, these 
individual distinctions between various yards are easily recognised ; just as in the different herds 
of Short-horns, all of which arise simply from the different ideal standards of perfection as 
conceived by different breeders. 
The principle on which a strain is brought to perfection after commencing is very simple, and 
consists only in the careful selection of breeding-stock year after year, with a view either to banish 
defects or to develop beauties. This we must enter into more fully in the succeeding chapter ; we 
will only add here that too much must not be expected at once. The breeding must of necessity 
be somewhat uncertain the first year, owing to the different materials of which the yard is composed 
and the want of experience in mating them ; but each season will mend matters, and there is a 
pleasure not easily conceived of in seeing year after year the chief faults disappear in your birds, 
while their beauties become more and more developed, and the proportion of show chickens steadily 
increases, till you perhaps carry off the “blue riband” of the season with the produce of the very 
birds which most disappointed you at first. It is your work — the result, not of mere money, but of 
your patience and skill — and it is work of this kind we wish to encourage and see more of. Merely 
to win a prize with a bought bird is nothing; but to create a new strain better than all your 
predecessors is to be of some real benefit, and to be a real “ poultry-fancier.” We have known a 
poor man sell his best chickens to richer people at ten pounds apiece, and beat the purchasers next 
year with the produce of what was left ; for in this field there is no favour, and mere money cannot 
contend against knowledge and skill, which will always come to the front in the end. 
The delay and preliminary study we have been so anxious to inculcate may be dispensed with 
if the amateur can engage the services of a really first-rate practical poultry-man or manager. 
* When we say the pens should be “unrelated,” it is chiefly the absence of individual relationship which is meant. In 
many cases, for reasons more fully explained in the next chapter, much trouble and uncertainty in breeding may be avoided by 
selecting all from the same yard. It is chiefly a question of time ; birds from the same strain usually producing the best immediati 
fruit while a skilled breeder would probably sacrifice somewhat of this, and in time produce better results from selections which 
give him at starting a good supply of unrelated blood. 
