532 FANCIERS’ JOURNAL 
AND POULTRY EXCHANGE. 





Pouttry Department. 

(For Fanciers’ Journal.) 
CROTCHETS OF THE POULTRY FANCY. 
By PETER SIMPLE. 
INOW 4: 
“T have so great a contempt and detestation for meanness, that I could 
sooner make a friend of one who had committed murder, than of a man 
who could be capable, in any instance, of the former vice. Under mean- 
ness, I comprehend dishonesty; under dishonesty, ingratitude; under 
ingratitude, irreligion; and under this latter, every species of vice and 
immorality in human. nature.’—Laurence Sterne. 
Can you, Mr. Editor, or any of your numerous contribu- 
tors, inform ‘a searcher after truth,’ in poultry affairs, of 
what advantage a fifteen or sixteen pound Brahma or Cochin 
cock is? Did you, or they, any of them, ever see one of 
these monstrosities? 1 know we read about them occasion- 
ally in the papers, and I remember, many years ago, in 
1858 I think, of seeing one that was sold at $150, which 
drew almost fifteen pounds. This was ten dollars a, pound 
for poultry, I understand ; and, in that respect, it was a very 
“big thing,’ of course. Still, I persist in my query cw 
bono 2 What's the good with such a brute? 
For breeding, I contend that the male bird, in good 
healthy, active condition, that weighs twelve and a half 
pounds, or, at the outside, thirteen, is one of ‘the biggest 
kind” for any practical purpose. If our ambitious fanciers 
would use a vigorous crower at eleven pounds weight, they 
would find such a breeder far better than the heavier ones. 
You don’t think so? Well, I know so! And I have tried 
all weights, raised all kinds, bred with all sizes. If you 
wish to ‘« break down”? your breeding hens in asingle year, 
and make cripples of your best pullets, however large or 
promising they may be, get a fourteen-pound cock-bird, if 
you can find one, and try this thing on. I ‘have been 
there.’ And yet it is a noted crotchet among the poultry 
fancy, to own and breed, exhibit and advertise, the biggest 
cock in the county or state, the progeny of which the ama- 
teur in the chicken-trade ‘‘ goes for” atsight of the breeder’s 
card! 
Now I tell you and young American poultry raisers, that 
this animal is of no account. He may answer for a “sign” 
in the yard of his possessor, and his owner may sell young 
birds from exhibiting him, should he possess other good 
points of qualification in the show-room. But, seven times 
in ten (and I have experimented with these huge male birds 
to my cost), I have found a majority of their young come 
deformed, weakly, out of style, bony, ill-looking, or worth- 
less, from chickenhood, And long ago I discarded the use 
of a cock, weighing over a dozen pounds at full maturity, 
that was in fair breeding condition. We must wnlearn this 
false notion of former days, and abandon the big rooster 
hobby, if we would succeed satisfactorily in breeding. 

When the shrewd author of ‘‘ Poor Richard’s Almanac ” 
flourished in Philadelphia, and that was many years agone, 
there was no chicken mania rife in this country. If there 
had then existed such a fever, the good old Ben. Franklin 
might have added to his chapter of kindly unique warnings 
for the benefit of credulous amateurs in the poultry fancy, 
something akin to this, appropriately: ‘‘ When I see a 
young man part with thirty or forty good round dollars, 
more or less, for an overgrown cock-chicken, ‘to breed 
from,’ and the innocent buyer finds his lauded purchase 
isn’t worth shucks for the desired purpose, I am prone to 
think that that young man has paid very dearly for his 
whistle!” 
Yet this crotchet of the fancy is a very common one, and — 
hundreds of breeders have bought the above experience ‘at 
heavy cost, while the older heads have learned, through 
practical experiment, that the ultra-colossal male bird is no 
good, in a yard or run, for mere breeding purposes, though 
his pedigree may be traced back to ‘‘ Leviathan” sire, and 
“ Amazon” dam, two immense China fowls owned by an 
extensive breeder in Westchester County, in 1860, that 
weren’t worth their weight in dock mud for reproduction, 
but which actually drew down the scales at over twenty-six 
pounds the’pair at two years old! 
As Mr. Robert Fortune remarked some years ago, about 
naming the Shanghais ‘ Cochins,’’ ‘the man who first 
applied this erroneous title has much to answer for ;’’ so say 
I of another hobby that has been run into the ground, first 
by English breeders, and of late years continued to a con- 
siderable extent in this country; and that is the introduc- 
tion and breeding of the ‘‘vulture hock” upon the Brahma 
fowls, for example, of both varieties.” Tis innovation has 
done a world of mischief already, and it will be years before 
this unsightly feathering upon the shanks can be eradicated, 
unfortunately. Verily, the man who introduced this nui- 
sance has much to answer for ! 
The hock upon these large fowls is neither useful, orna- 
mental, nor necessary, in either variety. I have seen it within 
the past three years upon numberless English birds, of the 
Light and Dark Brahmas and Partridge Cochins, and it 
has shown itself in many American yards, where the fan- 
cier has bred from either the imported English stock or its 
progeny in this country. The new American Standard de- 
clares that this 7s and is mot a ‘disqualification’’ in the 
show-pen, both with Brahmas and Cochins (whatever this 
language may signify), but I am very confident that J should 
decide this at once to disqualify, were I a judge at the exhi- 
bitions—which I am not. But this vulture-hock crotchet 
has come to be a very serious affair latterly. It is ‘‘ one 
of those things that a fellah can’t easily find out,” if he isn’t 
better posted, or a closer observer than is the average poultry 
fancier nowadays. As Ihave intimated, this hock work is 
English entirely. It was experimented with first on the 
other side of the water, in attempts to add to the leg- 
feathering of the Brahmas and Cochins of different colors. 
And a pretty mess they have made with it, to be sure! You 
can no more eradicate this offensive addition to the Cochin 
China fowl once tainted with it, than you can kill out 
‘‘ witch-grass’’ from your garden borders when it gets 
rooted there. Once a hocked bird, always a hocked bird, 
more or less. And this is a British ‘‘ hobby,’’ of which, 
and certain Yankee imitators thereof, I shall speak in my 
next article, 
New York, August, 1874, 
