I 
458 
April or earl)' May. Where were his own young 
stock to come from? Why, from these same poor 
old breeders who had been pushed for egg production 
probably all Winter, laid heavily all Spring, and finally 
caused to be the progenitors of the future generations 
on that farm after they were about as low in vitality 
as hens could be and still live. 
A PREVALENT CONDITION.—Now that has 
been the actual experience on many of the farms doing 
a baby chick business. It has grown by leaps and 
bounds, and in order to keep up with it the home 
flock has suffered. The same practice is going on in 
the management of flocks all over. The raiser forgets 
that our poultry to-day are highly specialized crea¬ 
tures; that they have been bred up to their present 
high productivity and character by painstaking breed¬ 
ers of thousands of years. They forget that the 
laws of nature are unalterable and that the tendency 
to revert to the wild, to degenerate back to what they 
were, is one of the strongest forces of nature. They 
forget that with creatures such as our present breeds 
of chickens a lowering of vitality is almost sure to 
follow any such unnatural effort as continued egg 
production. We very often overlook the effects the 
first year. We perhaps think nothing of it the second 
generation, but by the third or fourth generations of 
chickens hatched from poor-conditioned breeding 
stock blank failure is sure to come. By that time 
no white diarrhoea remedy or incubation vitalizer or 
special system of management can correct the evil 
done. It is because of the above outlined conditions 
that inflated advertising booms and tonics, remedies 
and so-called secrets have developed to such great 
proportions in the poultry world. We neglect the 
natural ways of preventing disease only to take up 
with catchpenny schemes and then blame the trouble 
on to some specific local cause. 
THE BREEDING PEN.—The breeding pen should 
be the most important flock of birds on the plant. 
Every farm where 50 or more chickens are kept 
should afford a selected pen of breeders. Each and 
every individual in that pen should be selected for 
its vigor and inherent vitality. If you are keeping 
hens for eggs principally and wish to increase your 
egg production through breeding, then select the 
breeders for vigor first and performance second. 
Every poultryman knows that egg production depends 
upon health. If you desire a quick maturing strain 
for broiler production, then select those individuals 
which show signs of vigor, and when young grew 
rapidly and without any setback. Growth and flesh 
production certainly depend upon vigor and a keen 
appetite. If you are selling eggs for hatching, baby 
chicks or breeding stock, surely you should select each 
year the best, and what do the best amount to if they 
lack in vigor? In the Fall is the proper time to 
separate the fowls, usually because then yoti can keep 
your flock for egg production if you so desire and 
keep your breeders as they should be kept. For with 
your strongest and finest specimens selected as breed¬ 
ers, their value as such may be great or small accord¬ 
ing to their management in the period preceding the 
breeding season. This management should simply be 
such treatment as will tend to lay up that surplus 
of health and force which will enable the fowls to 
go into the breeding season in perfect form. Well- 
ventilated roosting quarters and plenty of range are 
the principal thing. Never have the house closed 
tight at night. It is just as important to have fresh 
air in the house when the thermometer is 10° below 
as it is when 90° above. No matter what the weather 
may be, snow or rain, hot or cold, let those breeders 
go whither they will. You may not get many eggs 
from this little flock of selected breeders during the 
Winter, but when you want to set eggs from those 
hens in the Spring you will be surprised by their 
number, their fertility and the livability of the chicks 
which come out of them. 
WILL IT PAY?—The farmer will immediately say: 
“Well, that is all right for these fancy chicken raisers, 
but I can’t bother with such fussing.” Or the poultry- 
man will ask himself if such a practice is practical; 
can improvement be secured through such method? 
You can best answer the first question yourself. If 
you have trouble in hatching and raising large num¬ 
bers of cbicks then you know that anything which 
will overcome some of these troubles is a paying 
proposition. The success or failure of any poultry 
plant depends upon the young stock. If that is right 
the business may be profitable, but if the chickens 
don’t do well what chance is there for the whole 
plant? It sounds sensible, does it not, that breeding 
hens should be the best to start with and should have 
a period of rest just previous to breeding time? The 
exhibitor selects his pullets to show at just that period 
of development before egg production starts. Old 
hens always look more fit after a period of idleness, 
and just as they are ready to lay again. The exhibitor 
THS rtURAL NEW-YORKER 
knows that the judges are demanding more vigor, 
and so he selects his birds and conditions them so 
that they will be in their very height of vigor and 
health at show time. 
THE PRACTICAL SIDE.—Here is a method al¬ 
ready being practiced quite extensively. The pullets 
each year are kept for egg production. They may all 
be trap-nested and individual records secured if de¬ 
sired. The second Summer they are allowed some 
freedom and that Fall when it comes time to house 
the layers for Winter time the breeders are selected. 
They are now yearlings, and by their past record and 
present appearance they are selected. The selected 
ones are given a small cheap shelter, allowed their 
freedom and fed on corn and wheat. The others arc 
given laying quarters and fed a more stimulating 
THE DOUGLAS PEAR. Fio. 14fi. 
ration. The best of these breeders may be kept over 
another year. Such yearlings and two-year-olds when 
mated with well-developed cockerels or yearling males 
make ideal breeders, and need no more fussing or 
care than they would if all in one flock with the 
layers. a. l. clark. 
THE DOUGLAS PEAR. 
Fig. 146, this page, shows the Douglas pear, a new 
variety received from A. H. Griesa, Lawrence, Kan. 
This fruit was previously figured in our issue of Janu¬ 
ary 21, 1911, from specimens sent us the previous 
October. It is a seedling of Kieffer crossed with 
Duchesse d’Angouleme, in quality very good; rich and 
THE CEMENT SEED ROOM Fig. 147. 
sweet, with tender melting flesh. With Mr. Griesa it 
ripens late, coming in after peaches are gone, and 
has made a very good impression in the open mar¬ 
ket. The tree is hardy and free from blight, and 
very productive. Mr. Griesa is much pleased by the 
many excellent qualities shown by this pear, and there 
seems to be reason to predict a notable future for it. 
SPRAYING CONTESTS. 
The Illinois State Horticultural Society offers $170 
in cash prizes for best sprayed orchards. Competi¬ 
tors must be members of the society, and must sub¬ 
mit to fair requirements. An orchard to be entered 
for the prize must contain at least five acres and be 
March 29, 
in one solid block. The following “score card” is 
used in judging: 
Scab . 20 
Other fungous diseases of foliage and fruit. 5 
Curculio . 15 
Codling Moth . 20 
other insect injury to foliage and fruit. 5 
Freedom from spray injury. 15 
Size and color of foliage. 10 
Size and color of fruit. 10 
Last year the prize for best orchard—one of five 
acres—was won by L. R. Bryant, and this year he 
writes the following article on 
WHY I SPRAY. 
Why do I spray? I spray simply because I cannot 
afford to try to run a commercial orchard and not 
spray. The sooner that growers of apples, and of 
most other kinds of fruits as well, make up their 
minds that spraying is not a mere fad and a matter 
of sentiment, but a real, live, business proposition, 
and that they would much better grub out their trees 
and plant corn on the ground, unless they make up 
their minds to spray them, the better it will be for 
the reputation of Illinois as a fruit-growing State. 
Not that I mean that spraying alone is all that is 
necessary to grow good fruit. With it should go 
judicious pruning and proper cultivation and con¬ 
servation of the soil. The day is past when an or¬ 
chard can be planted, cropped for a few years, then 
let run to Blue grass and forever after take care of 
itself and give profitable returns. This is true not 
only of the commercial orchard, but of the small home 
orchard as well. 
In the Spring of 1910 a heavy freeze, the latter 
part of April, destroyed the apple crop all through 
northern Illinois, as w r ell as in many other localities. 
The next season there was a record crop in this 
vicinity and the fruit was generally very fair. The 
season was favorable, fungous troubles were few, and 
the lack of food the previous year had starved out 
the insects. Many of those who habitually neglected 
their orchards could say with much truth, “See my 
fine crop of apples grown without any expense for 
spraying!”* But how was it in 1912? In Bureau 
County practically all the apples last year were grown 
in orchards which had been cared for regularly and 
where there were any apples in the neglected orchards 
they were of inferior quality. Apples were offered for 
sale in the stores, sometimes of fair size and color, 
but of which you could not find one apple in a basket¬ 
ful but what showed insect defects. In my own or¬ 
chards there were practically no wormy apples, and 
while there were some undersized ones, where the 
crop was excessively heavy, these smaller apples were 
perfect number ones in everything except size. 
Spraying should be done at the proper time and 
with the proper materials, and thoroughly and evenly. 
This last point I wish to emphasize strongly. Thor¬ 
oughly drenching one tree or portion of a tiee and 
carelessly spraying or missing other portions is not 
good spraying. Remember, first, thorough spraying 
is not quantity so much as evenness of distribution. 
Second, bucket or knapsack pumps are of no value 
except in gardens and for very small trees. In an 
orchard you need all the force that one man can exert 
with a good hand pump and a power sprayer is better. 
For the home orchard, in neighborhoods where there 
is sufficient interest, a good sprayer, owned in partner¬ 
ship, but supervised by one man, is one solution. 
Northern Illinois can raise as good apples as any 
other section of the country, but will never attain the 
reputation of doing it until the orchards generally 
receive proper care, which means pruning, cultivation 
and conservation of the soil and spraying. 
THE CHAMPION HEN DRESSER. 
I send a clipping from the Watertown Standard. It 
may be interesting to some of the readers of The I£. 
N.-Y., as Baptiste Idaho broke all previous records. This 
was done on exhibition before a crowd of people and he 
was secured as an attraction of the show. H. Q. n. 
Rensselaer Falls, N. Y. 
Here is the clipping: 
Clayton, Feb. 8.—The Thousand Island Poultry show 
closed Thursday night with a record of the best exhibition 
of fancy and domestic birds seen in this part of the 
county. The attendance has been larger than ever before 
and the exhibits surpassed those of last year in both 
quality and number. Baptiste Idaho, the champion fowl 
piucker of the country, known as the “Butcher Boy;’’ 
broke all records the last evening in his specialty. A 
bird was picked and drawn ready for the broiler in 
exactly 83 seconds. Five birds were plucked in one 
minute and 2(> seconds. 
We heard about Baptiste Diabo last year and gave 
his record at dressing or ratber undressing a fowl. 
Some of our readers plainly said that they did not 
believe the statement, but we obtained statements from 
very reliable men who held the watch while Baptiste’s 
fingers flew. He is said to be a small man of French 
and Indian blood, and without question he holds the 
record at this work. We doubt if anyone who reads 
this will be likely to challenge him to a contest. 
Should there be anyone who thinks he can pull the 
feathers from Mr. Diabo’s cap we suggest that the 
match be arranged at the poultry department at Cor¬ 
nell. There should be a photographer on hand to 
make films for a moving picture show to illustrate 
how this man of electric fingers strips the feathers. 
