POULTRY NOTES.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXIX, Issue 132, 27 July 1911, Page 3

POULTRY NOTES.

building up a strain. In poultry breeding, a strain is a fa mil of any variety of fowls bred in line by descent by one breeder, or a successor, for five or more generations, 03- until such time as the individuals of that family have acquired certain cliaractericticsin common which distinguish them from other strains or specimens of the same variety. Each Idl'd occupies a specific place in the order of creation, in which it is acted upon by the two forces, often antagonistic in their effect. The first is the inherent lifeforce with its constitutional and acquired habits, wbcli we term heredity; the other, the manifold outside influences, or environment. It is only when these forces act in harmony that the best type is possible, and there is a constant effort on the part of the life-force to harmonise and adapt the action of its acquired tendencies to the surrounding influences. To this unceasing effort is due the tendency to a universal division and redistribution of parental characteristics in each succeeding progeny, and which accounts for the many and surprising and often apparently unaccountable changes of character that so often appear, and which wc term variation. Variations are always occurring, with or without antecedent crossing, often apparently for met‘e adaptation to present environments. It is to this constant tendency to variation that we owe our many breeds and varieties of poultry, and it is because of this tendency to vary that a strain becomes valuable. V\itli a knowledge of the laws that govern, the breeder rnqy so; guide the interaction of lie inherent life- force and the outside influences as to mould the type in almost any direction desired. It is believed that every breed will occasionally produce an individual of rare value that may found a variety or a family of still greater value, ft therefore behoves every careful breeder to bo ever on the watch foi if the individual is found, the bloodline of this one superior unit (■should he propogated. It is upon such a foundation that a strain is built. Something like a decade back an experienced .breeder of i Berkshire hogs discovered a male prodigy of that breed whose chief, value lay m his power to perpetuate, early maturity, form, vitality and feeding, power to his offspring; added to this value was another—-that of withstanding the effects of close inbreeding, for it was fourd that his progeny when closely inbred wore superior to those tainted by Bin outcross. ■ It is well-known that Jmost families of animals, hogs :oopei ially, sooner o t later succumb to close inhrqeding, hence the centgener value of this remarkable male, whose progeny are now stamping their supremacy ~wherever the ..Berkshire is knovdi. In like manner, in poultry breeding, when a superior individual is' hbted, that individual should he used as a unit basis for a strain. By-trap-nest or individual selection we -discover one individual of exceptional egg-producing ability. That bird should ho banded and recorded and the following season, her eggs should ba 11 reserved for hatching. The chicks should be toe-marked and banded and carefully watched to maturity, guarding the pullets from all association with male birds until such time as they are ’ready to be used in the breeding pans. The cockerels should he reared on range and fed carefully for vigorous growth, and the fo’lo\v,ig season should be allowed to run with a flock of hens. During this season, the pullets, during the laying season, may be yarded to themselves without males and trap-nested, and at the close of the laying season select the one best layer from the egg-record for the beginning of onr strain, and the following season we would mate that one female to the most vigorous and likely cockerel (now cock-bird) from the same hatch—her brother. Inbreeding? Yes, in this instance, and this mating of brother and sister we

call the Ist pen. If so minded, there ran ho no objection to including; enough females to make up a full pen, but the eggs of tiik one lien must he retained for hatching' and carefully marked and noted. This' male must he carefully gViardod and given most careful attention; 1 for' we 'shall use him for the following three .-masons. It will he noted that these birds are fully matured, as to age, and in their prime for breeding, and that we. shall restrict the hlood-liue of future piogeny to that of this pair. We also hear in mind that the highest excllonce in type has a tendency to retrogression in the individual. We therefore look carefully to environment — see that the birds of this mating and subsequent ones, are well housed yarded, and that have most nearly equalled or excelled their dam in egg production, to mate have all of the comforts of the modern poultry yard, l-ixcelkmce in type may ho ’attained only by careful' selection and restriction of the individual. From the mulcts of this mating, wo Select, only those with their sire for the 2nd pro. I'idiots from this mating are selected as before, to mate with their grandsire to form pen No. d, and selected pullets from non No. d arc selected to urate with their great grandsirc to form pen No. 4, and from the orogeny of this last mating we have founded a race from which we estaolish our strain. Now, we begin over again and proceed precisely as before; ’ brother and sister, , after file expel imchtal hiving year is past, will constitute pen No. ! of line No. 2. and nrecced as before, breeding in line, i ; striding the blood of our layers to the male line, hearing in mind that functional degeneration is the result of telegony. and that the female Line mu-t he restricted to male hkiod of our laving strain.—C. S. Gorline 1 in “Poultry Tribune.”