Rocky Mountain husbandman. [volume] (Diamond City, Mont.) 1875-1943, 1884-07-03
(The Hunlhp Nard,
A FEW POINTS ON POULTRY BREEDING

The same laws that govern the breeding
of poultry, operate with the same force and
effect in breeding all kinds of animals from
the horse to the pig. In order to be sue
cessful breeder, the individual must have
the capacity of discovering the minute and
seemingly unimportant variations which
regularly occur in the offspring of the stock
he is breeding. 1t is not only necessary for
him to have the faculty of discovering these
minute variations, but he must have the
skill and Judgment necessary to utilize the
desirable variations, and with that object in
view, so mate his breeding stock that he
may peapeta1ate the favorable changes, in
future generations. What mean by varia-
tons are those characteristics in the off
spring different from the parent stock,
however slight; and they may be desirable
and such as we would not wish to perpetu-
ate. The latter we class as culls, in poultry
breeding, and of course use them for market
purposes. e....,.. .....,
To lay down any plan or rule by which
poultry breeder shall select and mate his
birds for market purposes, is simply impos-
sible, unless our ideas and conceptions of
material things were the same, and could be
measured by mathematical rule.
There are certain general principles
which all are familiar with, that is to select
the best always, and reject the inferior.
There are, however, a few principles which
attention may be directed to, and I believe
have been overlooked by poultry breeders
as rule.
1t is growing so common of late wears
to use pullets of the same years hatch to
breed from. that it is the exception to find
hens in the breeding pens. Pallets hatched
early in the spring are claimed to be the
best layers, and therefore the best to breed
from, but such is not the fact. | can very
well see why pouLterer, as disting uished
from a breeder, would recommend pullets
instead of hens, as his business is to raise
poultry and eggs Tor the general market.
without any aim at the improvement of the
stock; and such poultry raisers have gene
so far as to recommend the killing off of all
hens of year old and above, and keep no
hen for laying purposes after year old.
As said before, can see wherein this
will be an advantage to the poulterer, as
they will certainly lay more eggs, for the
amount of food, than they will after, but
when we come to consider the interests of
the breeder, there is change in the advan-
tages.
Poultry will reproduce at an early age
hafp
cordng to the laws of inheritance, if he
continue to breed from immature stock, the
maturity OF the offspring will eventually be
retarded and we will have dwarfed proge-
ny, while il we breed from mature parents,
the offspring will partake after their ma
tured progenitors, and will approach the
size of matured specimen at an earlier
age. We may not have experienced the
evil effects of immature breeding as yet,
from the fact that mature specimens are
continually used in connection with those
that have not reached maturity. ..r
But were we to use those pullets, or inn
mature fowls, to breed from exclusively,
it would not require many generatio ms to
manifest its effects in the progeny.
There is another question allied to this,
and might call for the query ''why are early
hatched pullets the best layers?' There is
something, evidently, above and beyond
that OF the season, that controls and gov
erns this capacity of early hatched pullets.
We know from experience, that all early
hatched chicks mature more quickly and
produce the best developed chicks in every
respect, and think we can safely say that
the qualities of chicks are in a geometrical
ratio with the period in which they are
hatched and raised in the spring. Such be-
ing the fact, where shall we look for the ex-
planation, since we can see nothing in the
season, of that time of the year to cause
such difference2 ...
1t is plainly to be attributed to the fact