Thứ Sáu, 13 tháng 12, 2019

MY EXPERIENCE IN BREEDING PIT GAMES


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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