BETTER COTTON FOR 10c AN ACRE 
A LESSON IN BREEDING 
(Reprinted from Coker’s Magazine Catalog—1931) 
POULTRY BREEDING 
A poultry raiser who trap-nests his hens, 
discovers one which has a record of two hun¬ 
dred and fifty eggs per annum. That is a 
fine record. The poultry raiser hatches all 
the eggs from this hen for his general flock: 
but he does not stop there, for he knows he 
must develop other and, if possible, better 
mother hens if he is to keep up and increase 
the yield of his flock. So he trap-nests the 
pullets of the two hundred and fifty-egg hen 
and probably finds one which will run two 
hundred and sixty eggs. He repeats the 
process with the pullets from that hen and 
with other extra fine hens as they are dis¬ 
covered, and so continues year by year to 
maintain at a high figure his average flock. 
People will pay him $10 to $20 for cockerels, 
and several dollars per dozen for eggs from 
this flock, because he does continuous, scien¬ 
tific and systematic breeding which maintains 
and improves the productiveness of his flock. 
MUST BE CONTINUED 
If the poultry breeder should stop his sys¬ 
tem for discovering and breeding from his 
highest yielding hens, his flock would “run 
out” in a very short time, and his reputation 
for the best breeding stock would promptly 
disappear. 
The average farmer needs to learn this 
lesson, which every up-to-date livestock pro¬ 
ducer knows by heart. No animal breeder 
would purchase a few pedigreed high record 
animals, turn them out to breed promiscu¬ 
ously and expect to build up a uniform, high- 
producing flock or herd. He would adopt as 
essential to success, a system of testing and 
selecting from their records a few animals in 
each generation for breeding purposes and 
would thus advance the quality of his herd. 
WHY SEED “RUN OUT” 
The average grower of cotton and other 
plants, on the other hand, has not learned 
this lesson. He may buy a few bushels of 
the very best pedigreed seed and, if he is 
pleased with results, he will plant the seed 
from these and will often continue to do this 
year after year until the law of variation 
(which applies equally to both plants and ani¬ 
mals) and accidental mixing (which often oc¬ 
curs at gins and threshers) has destroyed the 
uniformity and value of his strain. 
It is strange that the average grower of 
plants is so far behind the average poultry- 
man and other animal growers in his under¬ 
standing and use of this essential means of 
making profits. The animal grower has to 
pay many dollars, sometimes thousands of 
dollars, for a single individual of proved 
breeding worth. 
GROW YOUR OWN SEED 
On the other hand, the grower of plants 
can continuously reflect into production on his 
farm the best and most recent work of the 
plant breeder for about 10$ per acre. He can 
do this by purchasing each year seed of the 
plant breeders’ latest and most improved 
strain for a small proportion of his acreage, 
and on this acreage grow the seed for his 
general crop the following year. 
SIMPLE AND INEXPENSIVE 
My experience indicates that by this simple 
and inexpensive method, if religiously fol¬ 
lowed year by year, the money value of the 
products of the farm can be steadily improved 
and will amount to not less than 10% over 
the more common method of occasionally buy¬ 
ing some good seed and then allowing them 
to run out. 
This simple and inexpensive system applies 
not only to the money crops, cotton and to¬ 
bacco, but also to food and feed crops as well. 
KNOW YOUR BREEDER 
Of course, if a man is going to adopt this 
scientific method for maximum production, he 
must be sure that his plant breeder has ex¬ 
perience, character and scientific training, and 
besides, that he is doing breeding work on a 
large enough scale to insure constant progress. 
Page Ten 
THE SEED WE SELL YOU IS BREEDING STOCK 
