THE POULTRY BOOK. 
51 
If it be considered necessary to cross the Dorkings for the purpose of producing 
a hardier fowl, such a plan as the following offers the greatest probability of success^ 
It is based upon the fact that, in cross-breeding, the pullets usually are like the 
mother, and the cockerels like the father. To obtain a brood in May it will be 
necessary, in the beginning of the year, to put two or three large Dorking hens with 
a short-legged, compact Cochin cock, either of the common buff or of the Partridge 
variety. Of the chickens, choose those pullets which possess in the highest degree 
the Dorking character, — viz. fine bone, short white legs, and compact body, square 
on the limbs ; and, in the following season, mate these with a good Dorking cock. 
The result will be a breed three-fourths Dorking, which if care has been taken in 
the selection, will show very little trace of Cochin descent ; whilst the size and 
constitutional vigour of the birds will have been much improved by the infusion of 
new blood from the hardiest of races. One caution, however, is needed ; — if these 
birds are permitted to breed amongst themselves, they will sometimes revert to the 
Cochin type ; it will be, therefore, necessary to mate the pullets again with a 
Dorking cock. As in all cases of rearing for size and strength, great care must be 
taken to avoid breeding closely, viz. from birds related to each other. 
The cross-bred birds produced by mating Cochins with the large French 
table-fowls known as the Creve Cceur, La Fleche and Houdan varieties, are 
very remarkable for their rapid growth and for the great size they eventually 
attain* We have reared chickens early in March from Cochin hens running 
with a Creve Cceur cock, that were never housed, being in a lean-to shed 
open to the west ; the hens being cooped on wet days, whilst the chickens had 
the run of a grass field at all times and seasons. Some of the cockerels were 
killed in May, when less than twelve weeks old, weighing four pounds six ounces 
each as caught up out of the field, and when trussed ready for the spit they 
weighed precisely three pounds each* In the first week in August, the birds 
being then five months old, the weight of the cock chicken was seven pounds, that 
of each of the pullets rather over four pounds ; although they had not been put up 
to fatten, or even fed on soft food, or any attempt made to restrain their wander- 
ings in the fields. To those who wish to breed large hardy birds for the table, a 
better cross than Cochin hens with a Creve Cceur or La Fleche cock cannot be 
recommended. The chickens produced will be of rapid growth, large size, and 
great constitutional vigour, and, when cooked, will be found plump, and with skin 
and fat much whiter than that of the Cochins. There is, it must be confessed, one 
great disadvantage attending the rearing of cross-bred fowls— they are quite useless 
for the purposes of exhibition, and unsaleable as stock birds. This itself is really a 
very serious drawback, as, after giving a high price for good fowls, the breeder not 
unfrequently looks forward to the sale of some of the chickens as a remuneration 
for the outlay* 
The general consideration of the diseases to which fowls are subject, and the 
best method of treating each complaint, will form the subject of a separate chapter, 
by which arrangement much needless repetition will be avoided ; nevertheless, our , 
F 2 
