Again, I have seen a great many cases where poultry-farmers would
send away and buy a lot of cockerels. The man that raised and sold
them had no knowledge of how to classify them, and the man who
bought them knew he was buying cockerels and that is all he did know
about them. He could not be sure whether they would increase his egg
yield or not. He had to pay his money and take chances. It was
nothing more nor less than a gamble; but the days of gambling in the
poultry business are passed for the intelligent, progressive poultryman,
no longer will he be obliged to trust to luck or intuition. He will be able
to select his male birds with as much assurance as his hens, and instead
of groping in the dark, he will have the satisfaction of seeing and knowing
just what he is doing by bearing in mind the instructions in this chapter.
The reader will by this time be familiar with the different types and
capacities of hens, and will not be surprised to learn there is a similar
number of variations in the male birds; and if one wishes to produce a
certain type and capacity in a pullet or cockerel, he must select the
parent birds that will produce that type. We know how to select the
hen; we will now take up the study of how to select the male bird.
We go through the same movements in selecting or testing the male
bird as we do in selecting the hen, but we use a different set of charts.
