POULTRY KEEPING

Press, Volume LXX, Issue 21315, 7 November 1934, Page 5

POULTRY KEEPING

PIGEONS, CANARIES, AND CAGE BIRDS NOTES [By "BARRED ROCK"] The annual conference of the South Island Poultry, Pigeon, and Canary Association will be held in the Fanciers' Hall to-morrow and Friday. Exhibits for the Canterbury Agricultural and Pastoral Association's annual show must be penned not later than 9 a.m. to-morrow. The New Zealand Utility Poultry Club will hold a field day at its competition. grounds, Northcote road, Papanui, next Saturday. A large attendance is expected. The delegates to the South Island Poultry, Pigeon, and Canary Association's conference have been invited, and local members of Parliament will attend. Line Breeding As a technical term in the poultry breeders' vocabulary, line breeding means just one thing. What that is they may be best explained by showing first what the poultry breeder calls a line. Ordinarily an individual inherits only half of its characters from its two immediate parents, the other half coming from more remote ancestors, and a frequent phenomenon being the particular resemblance of an individual to a grand parent. This phenomenon of alternate inheritance —the disappearance of characters in one generation and reappearance in the next—is scientifically interesting and of use in determining principles of breeding; but in breeding practice it is a disturbing element —an uncertain factor of sometimes alarming energy. The desirable and valuable individual for breeding purposes is the specimen of all-round excellence that transmits this excellence to its progeny to the exclusion of individual characteristics absent in it, but existing somewhere in the ancestry. When the descendants of such birds show the same prepotency, the quality ofr direct transmission appears to be fixed as characteristic of the family, and a line? of known breeding quality is i established. Line breeding is simply' breeding, first to get and identify, then to maintain. and use to the best ad- | vantage, such lines, families, or specially improved strains. Origin of Lines The actual origin of a line of marked prepotency, and with the habit of direct transmission of all conspicuous characters, is probably in most cases from a single hen; but the fact can only be known when single pair matings or trap nesting' enable the breeder to identify the dam as well as ■ the sire ot" specimens that attract attention for quality and prepotency. A line that originates from a mating in which the object was to reproduce a? nearly as possible the combination of characters in a particular hen, usually takes its name from that hen, and such a line is usually very carefully developed, starting with a single mating of that hen with the male that it is thought will mate best with her for the purpose. As a rule, the' sire or a brother of a highly bred hen is most likely to contribute the male elements required for the most exact possible duplication of her type; but when a hen of remarkable quality appears in a stock of ordinary breeding, or when her breeding is unknown, the breeder will select a male of the best breeding that he has, or can find, that seems most suitable to mate with this particular hen. Not infrequently it happens that valuable lines are developed from birds with excellent quality in most characters, but which have some fault that bars them from the general matings of a breeder, the matings from which he sells eggs for hatching. Novices in breeding generally suppose that the thing to be especially avoided is the use in the breeding pen of specimens that would bo disqualified for exhibition. That depends on the reason for disqualification, the general quality of the bird, whether eggs from the pen containing it are to be sold for hatching, and imon whether the breeder knows how to mate to offset the defect, or can afford to grow a perhaps excessive proportion of culls from a specimen and its descendants for a few years for the sake of getting extraordinary value in the birds of the line that are right in every way. Breeding: Out of Faults It has been shown that any fault can be bred out by selection and proper mating, so that within a few years it will rarely appear. It often happens that a bird that excels all others produced by a breeder in a season, at nearly every point, has one bad fault, which marc its appearance and disqualifies it for exhibition. It may be a little thing, as the absence of the spike on a rose comb, or a tendency to carry the tail to one side. Many birds that show this slightly at home, and are not positively wry tailed, will at a show, where they are kept in a small coop, and excited more or less, becoming tired and nervous, carrv the tail so much to one side that while in this state they are either disqualified for positive fault, or if the judge feels doubtful about it, are cut so much on shape that they have no chance of a place. But any of these birds may be mated in special matings, whose progeny will be kept at home until the fault is so far bred out that the occasional appearance of it in a lot of good chicks will not be considered ground for complaint by reasonable customers. In general, however, the most celebrated lines come from exhibition birds of exceptional quality and ability to produce quality; and remarkable male lines—that is, lines producing an unusual proportion of males of high quality and great prepotency —are much more numerous than equally distinguished female lines; for in pen breeding the male always gets full credit for performance, while the female side of the credit is the undivided asset of all his mates. Another reason for the greater popularity of lines bearing the name of a celebrated male is that the buyers of birds for breeding mostly want males to improve their stock because in this way they get the quickest general improvement at the least cost. But it reallv makes no difference whether the bird at the head of the line is a male or a female. The important thing is first to get a bird of exceptional quality and then to fix that quality—at the same time strengthening it in any detail in which it may be weak—as a family characteristic.