Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1890-12-18
Improve Your Poultry.

Now is a good time of the year to be-
gin the improvement of the poultry yard
and such improvement is within the means
Of every farmer. To breed year after year
from the same stock is sure to end in
race of ene1vate1 birds which Hawthorne
has SO graphically pictured in his House
of the Seven Gables No sensible man
wants such stock or can affor1 to keep
them. But, it may be said many farmers
have not the means at hand to buy thor
oughhred poultry at the high prices which
the farmers demand, and must be content
to make the best of what they have.
Precisely, but how will you make the best
of it? Surely not by letting your depreci-
ated stock get still worse by continued in
breeding. No; your best way is to thin
every male of your flock and thin out the
hens and pullets, retaining only the best
ones, and buy new cocks in sufficient num-
bers to allow one cock to each twelve or
fifteen hens.
If you can afford to buy good birds at
about s. each of some reliable breeder you
will improve your stock more surely and
rapidly than by buying inferior specimens
at half price or less; and if you can afford
to buy a lew thoroughbred pullets
at the same time. not related TO
your males, you will be able next year to
breed a few thoroughbreds, and probably
sell enough eggs and birds at good prices
for breeding purposes to pay you for the
care and trouble.
The next year you will have flock of
grades much improved by the cross, Gull
them again carefully, retaining only as
breeding pullets the best specimens, and
use again thoroughbred males not related
to the pullet, and by continuing this pro-
cess a few years you will have flock as
good as any one could wish for either
eggs or market poultry, though it may
take several years TO breed out the mongrel
blood with which you began, so as to be
abet to sell fancy stock and win prizes at
the exhibitions
The kind of breed to be selected will de-
pend much on circumstances. For eggs
only the leghorn treeds are unquestion-
ably the most prolific; the white leghorn
cock also makes an excellent cross Nth
the brahma hen or the plymouth rock when
broiIers are wanted; the leghorn chicks or
the half bloods hatch with more ease and
certainty than the full blooded aslatics,
and they come to the size desired for
market broilers quite as soon. The OBJ
jections to the leghorn breed are: Rather
small size of eggs. light weight when
killed for market, and the difficulty of re-
straining them from flying over fences.
The dark varieties also have dark coIored
legs which are not the fashion in Boston
market which demands without any SEN
sible reason, yellow legs.
The plymouth rock breed probably COM
bines as many desirable points as any
other breed we have for general usefulness.
1t natures early, the eggs hatch we'll in
incubators, and chicks come early to
market as broilers and roasters, the pullets
also lay when little older than the leghorns
and for roasters and stable full grown
bird they are excellent, they also have the
fashionable yellow legs. They are docile
and easily fenced without being disposed to
laziness like the asiatics.
The asiatic birds, which include the light
and dark brahmas, the cochins, langshans
and other similar breeds are less desirable
for practicable purposes than the above
named breeds. They make the heavy
roasters and are good winter layers, and
are easily restained by fencing but they are
slow in coming to maturity; their eggs do
not hatch so surely in the incubator, and
they are apt to be lazy and die of apoplexy
when over fed
The light brahma is perhaps the best
as it is certainly the widest known of
these breeds and has many admirers; but
where simple profit is the object in breed
ing we believe it must yield to the other
breeds we have mentiGned.-Mass.P Plough