By T. K. BRUNER.
This subject has always been very interesting to me and I have devoted much time and thought to the breeding of pit fowl with the idea of producing each year a larger number of first-class cocks on each yard. I feel I have met with some success along these lines, so I will write my ideas on breeding in this article.
In selecting my fowl for brood purposes, I have been governed not by the performance of one individual cock, but by the performance of a whole set of brothers. For example. I take a set of six brothers and fight them. One shows to be a perfect fighting cock, two others prove to be above the average, two average cocks and one just worth fighting. The first time shown, they win four and lose two; the remaining four win three out of four in their second fight and two out of three win their third fight. This gives these six brothers nine won and six lost out of 15 battles fought. This proves that they are as a whole cutting, fighting cocks and any one of them that is correctly formed is worth breeding from and the same is true of their sisters.
On the other hand, say you fight six brothers and out of the six you found one real fighting cock and the other five brothers unable to win their fight? Are such fowl worth breeding? I say no, not even the one good one, as you could not expect his offspring to average much better than he and his brothers unless he was bred over hens that were known to produce winners, then it would be necessary to breed a stag back to your hens to keep from reducing the high qualities of your hens. The same principle holds if you breed a cock from an exceptionally high class family of performing brothers onto a set of ordinary hens—you must breed the cock back on his daughters and granddaughters to get the benefit of his good qualities and improve the average of your flock. It is true like begets like, but it won’t work in half bloods—you have too many different forces pulling against each other in the first mating. All this takes time but to my mind it is the only way to produce consistently good fowl.
Some breeders say breed your strain absolutely pure without any out-cross; others say cross-bred cocks are best; but I don’t agree fully with either viewpoint, as I think fresh blood from time to time is essential to keep any strain up in the running. On the other hand, I believe that continual crossing in a haphazard way will ruin the good qualities of any fowl. If a man has a strain of consistent winning fowl that he feels are in the need of some fresh blood to strengthen or increase the size, I suggest he secure a cock of a family as near like his own in style, conformation and action as he can find, and of a family known to produce cutting cocks. Single mate this cock to one of your very best hens, fight all the stags or cocks, select the one that brings forward the characteristics of your old fowl, breed him back over the same hen or her full sister, fight the stags and if they win the majority of their fights, put the one that suits you best over a yard of hens. This will give you seven-eights of your old blood in the offspring and they should be as good, if not better, than your old, pure bloods. If not, you have not accomplished what you desired to do when you made the first mating and I would discard them and try it all over again until I did make the cross that nicked and improved my fowl.
If a man is breeding some old well-known strain, he need not go outside and add some new blood for freshening or strengthening. For example, one breeds the Dyer Claibornes. He can get a Boyce cock to breed and still breed pure Claibornes, yet the Boyce cock will have the same effect as if he made the cross with another strain. There is nothing to be said in favor of continually crossing fowl except for strength; yet every time a cross is made you run the risk of ruining: your fowl in many ways. There are now two strains of fowls that have exactly the same conformation and action and by continually crossing you soon have a regular “Duke’s mixture” on your yards with no uniformity or likeness in any two of them. How can you expect them to come alike in cutting and winning ability—and it takes that to win—when they are alike in no other way? Like will produce like if like is bred to like, otherwise it will not. The three-hundred egg hens were not bred this way: they were bred by breeding a son of a high egg producing hen on to a hen of high production, then line-bred. If such methods weakened fowl they would not go on increasing the egg records year after year.
Boys, you can learn a lot by reading some of the dunghill chicken papers and following the principles used in breeding game fowl, substituting fighting and cutting ability in the place of show qualities and egg production. Most any strain or cross will produce one or two high class performers in every lot raised, but can a man afford to raise and walk a dozen or more stags in order to get a couple of good ones fit to fight for his money?
These are the general lines I have followed in breeding my fowl. It is true that my methods take time, but I have not found any short cuts to raising consistent winning fowl. The past season—my last in the game—I had the pleasure and satisfaction of fighting every cock raised from two of my yards and not one of them lost their first battle. I did not accomplish this in a hurry, it took me years to get these chickens up to this consistent form, yet I feel I have been fully repaid for all the time, patience and expense required to accomplish it. In mating my fowl year after year, I have been careful to select brood cocks as near as possible like their predecessors in length of feather, conformation, style and action. I like a brood cock that has plenty of strength, long, tough plumage, plenty of foot action, short shanks, low spurs, long thighs, small keen heads, bright, fiery, wide-awake eyes, medium bone and good balance, running in weight from 4.12 to 6 pounds.
In selecting brood hens I have paid no attention to size, but have selected them as near alike as possible in feather, shape and action. I have not for years, bred anything but full sisters on a yard, figuring that the youngsters would be more alike and uniform than from a mixed yard of hens, even if of the same blood, and I did not care to guess which hen out of eight or ten threw the good stags. By breeding full sisters only on a yard your fowl will soon all come consistently good or bad and you will know where you stand.
The basis of the fowl I have referred to in this article were five hens, full sisters, bred by my good friend, Mr. H. H. Cowan of Riverton, Ala., and were presented to me by Mr. Henry Waddell, of Corinth, Miss. After receiving them I wrote Mr. Cowan and secured their exact blood lines and proceeded from that point to breed them along the above methods, using the blood of an outside cock of the same blood, and the blood of two hens of another family which nicked perfectly. Such fowl can be secured from any one of the many reliable and experienced advertisers in Grit and Steel. Write the one you select exactly what you want and pay him his own price for them and in nine cases out of ten you will get good fowl. You cannot expect to get quality fowl for nothing. It takes both time and money to produce them, and if you want a man’s best you should be willing to pay a fair price for them and not erpect to get them at dunghill prices. I would rather pay 50 for one good hen that will reproduce, than to pay the same money for a dozen hens that were of unknown quality. The absolute truth is, one real hen is worth a dozen good cocks.
I have not referred to it above, but I assume you have understood that gameness was essential in any pit fowl. I am a firm believer in the Hon. Ewing A. Walker’s doctrine that gameness is the third heel in the pit. A cock that is not deep game will go to pulling his punches when wounded, while a deep game cock will strike harder and keep it up as long as he has the strength to move. I have won many seemingly impossible fights with cocks almost dead, all because they were real game cocks. I have been given credit for wonderful condition when it really was the heart in the cock that carried him through to victory. You cannot put cold-blooded cocks in the same condition you can real game cocks; their spirit won’t stand the grind of real conditioning.
A first class cock, in my opinion, must have the following qualities: cutting ability strength and gameness. With these qualities as a basis I want a cock that starts off fighing carefully, ever seeking to get the advantage without closing in, where he only has an equal chance to trade licks; yet when he is caught I want him to throw caution to the winds and fight with all his might. Have you ever noticed how few licks it is necessary for a real cutting cock to make in order to put his opponent out of commission? Then how many blows a poor cutter has to strike before he cuts his opponent down? Isn’t there a big difference?
Now, boys, this is written for what it is worth to you. and if you get nothing out of it just forget you ever read it and all is well: but if I have helped one man to breed better cocks, I will feel my time has not been wasted.
T. K. Bruner.
P. S.—For fear that some will misconstrue this article I want to say that at the close of the past season I retired from the game and have disposed of all my fowl.—T. K.B.
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