The Farm-poultry . re particularly how I put more brains andthought into the business: While I was .at home thatwinter I had a good deal of time to watch the birds andbecome acquainted with them individually. Id alwayskept records of my matings—had a nice little notebook,neatly kept, showing what the matings were each sea-son, and how the chicks from each were punch marked:but I must admit that except in the case of a lew favor-ite birds I didnt carry any very accurate or connectedhistory of my birds in my head. In fact, there wereonly a few birds each season that I followed throughthe season
The Farm-poultry . re particularly how I put more brains andthought into the business: While I was .at home thatwinter I had a good deal of time to watch the birds andbecome acquainted with them individually. Id alwayskept records of my matings—had a nice little notebook,neatly kept, showing what the matings were each sea-son, and how the chicks from each were punch marked:but I must admit that except in the case of a lew favor-ite birds I didnt carry any very accurate or connectedhistory of my birds in my head. In fact, there wereonly a few birds each season that I followed throughthe season and knew what they were at every stage ofgrowth. As I was saying, while I was at home that winter Igot better acquainted with my breeding stock than I hadever been before, and as I became acquainted with thebirds I made a good many shifts in my matings. With-out going into all the story, I may say that most of theshifting was in the way of reducing the numbers offemales in the pens. Starting out with about ten or. Winter Chickens Growing f»r Soft Roasiers. twelve females in a yard, every day or two Id take ahen out of some pen that didnt look like she belongedwith the bunch, until none of the males we started withwhen the pens were mated up had over eight mates, andsome had only five. That was all right as far as ourown hatching was concerned, but not for our egg good many, in fact most of the hens culled out werereally good breeding birds, simply didnt match up withmy favorite hens in the yards they were in. As I hada good many males in reserve, I concluded to make alot more matings, and colonize them about the farm,using some of the small houses that would later be usedfor growing chickens. I made ten such matings, usingbetween fifty and sixty hens in all. That was one ofthe best jobs I ever did, for three of those matings gaveme more than fifty per cent of the first rate breeding andexhibition stock produced that season. That happened,as nearly as Ive ever been ab
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, booksubjectpoultrynortheasterns
