50 
THE POULTRY BOOK. 
Another recommendation they sometimes receive is, that the feathers are quite 
or nearly as valuable as those of the duck and goose. If old birds are killed, 
or chickens after they have perfectly completed their autumnal moult, and become 
full-plumaged birds, this statement may have some weight ; but at this period 
of their lives they are valueless, or nearly so, as market-fowls ; and if killed at 
the age when they are in the highest condition, it will be found that the feathers 
are mixed with stubs, containing so much blood, that their value is very small ; 
whereas in a duckling of from eight to ten weeks, the feathers of the breast are 
perfectly formed, and consequently valuable. 
To sum up, it may be stated that the Cochins are chiefly valuable from their 
hardihood, from the ease with which they can be kept in a small space, and 
the manner in which they bear confinement ; from their great prolificacy, in 
winter especially ; from their docility and the readiness with which they sit in ‘any 
place, and at any time of the year ; also from the quickness of their growth and 
size as a family fowl ; but as a first-class table and market fowl, it will be found 
that any attempt to breed them for this purpose will terminate in disappointment. 
In treating of each variety of fowl, it may be regarded as desirable to speak 
of a few of the more useful cross-bred birds, which, although generally of no 
value for exhibition, are frequently extremely useful for table and economical 
purposes. When Cochins were first introduced, many persons turned down a 
cock into their poultry-yards with a view to the improvement of the ordinary 
farm-yard stock. Never was there a more fallacious idea : fowls that are bred 
between Cochins and the common barn-door breeds are about the least useful 
variety of poultry that can be imagined ; gaunt, weedy, stilty, big-boned, angular, 
yellow-legged birds are the produce of such a cross ; and it is only requisite to 
ask the opinion of the poultry salesmen at Leadenhall, and of the higglers who 
collect the fowls for them from the country, to know the estimation in which such 
birds are held. 
Many persons who keep as their principal stock non-sitting varieties of fowls, 
such as Spanish, Polish, and Hamburgs, employ Cochin hens to act as sitters and 
foster-mothers, and frequently rear half-bred birds for home consumption. In 
favour of the first of these crosses little can be said, — the Spanish is a long-legged 
bird, and this is a character which it is not desirable to engraft upon a Cochin 
stock. The offspring of Cochin hens running in a yard where Polands and 
Hamhurgs are kept, are compact and short-legged, and are useful as sitters, 
although the sires are of non-incubating varieties. The cockerels serve to supply 
the kitchen ; but they are of course useless for stock birds. 
Of the other crosses, that with the Dorking is one which calls for special 
attention. There is no doubt whatever that many of our prize Dorkings have had 
their size increased by the breed being crossed with Cochins, and then bred back 
again for two or three generations from the Dorking ; in fact, birds with the 
apertures in their legs from whence the feathers have been extracted, have before 
now graced the first prize-pens at some of our poultry shows. 
