THE PRACTICAL TYPE OF BRAHMA

Alexandra Herald and Central Otago Gazette, Issue 423, 2 June 1904, Page 2

THE PRACTICAL TYPE OF BRAHMA

The time has been when Brahmas, Black Langßhans, and Black Cochins could lay more dollars' worth of eggs in a year than any other breed. To start with 150 Brahma eggs, eqnal in weight 178 Plymouth Book eggs and 213 White Wyandotte eggs. The hen that holds the world's record for a single bird, 313 eggs in 333 days, is a light Brahma. Toa ask why do they not do this to-day P They can do it if breeders will return to first principles, and to the type of Brahma that was in vogne when this record was established. Brahmas, in their most prolific type, where they gave the largest growth for food consumption and 165 to 192 eggs per capita for whole flocks in groups of 35 to 76, and when eggs weighed from one and three-fourths to two pounds per dozen, were oblong in shope, above medium length of neck, thighs, shanks, and such, were clothed in closely clinging plumage when a portion of lower thigh • with hock-joint showed clear below the body line, and lower thigh was closely plumed in profile, with no loose hanging plumage about the profile, with no loose hanging plumage about the hock. As the breed deviated from this description into Cochin shape, with their short neck, sbort todies, short thighs and shanks, with fully 40 per cent, greater volume of feathers, heavy shank, and foot plumage, with vulture hock, so did they diminish their egg production until females of the latter description will not lay 80 eggs a year. No one is to blame but the breeders of tbem. Not only are there fewer eggs, but the eggs are correspondingly smaller in size. I say this is a fact: The excessively heavy piumaged Cochins lay fewer eggs than do those specimens that are reasonably clothed. There is no reason why the Asiatics, especially the Light Brahmas, should not to-day be as popular as they were in 1865. Then they had a large call from the poulterer, as well as from the fancier for exhibition purposes. We have only, as breeders and fanciers, to take the stand, and demand that they shall be bred to the original types, with their once hard, closecHnging plumage, when the lower thigh and hook were demanded smoothly feathered in profile, showing clean below the line of body, when shanks were reasonably feathered down the shanks and covering the outer toe, leaving the feathering of the middle toe optional with the breeder, such middle toe feather, ins: having no value in the scale of points. Bat in 1893 came the demand for middle toe feathering, which was secured under protest and a compromise that declared a cut of a single point for middle toes bare, At that time I went on record as an objector, and predicted that we would have loose-feathered and vulture hocks; that to secure all middle toes'feathered we would increase the heavy, stiff, quilled plumage and vulture hock, and thus' diminish egg production. ■ I ask the candid reader, Has my prediction proved true P Have the Brahma clubs been true to their promise to use all effort to improve and protect the breed P As a rule, do the Brahmas show the profit to the breeder they did ten years agoP When those who control exhibitions and the making of standard will demand that the highest practical type of all breeds shall win the prizes, and the judges shall be made to work up to standard demands in shape, weight, and color, then will the Asiatics stand as favourably before the community as any breed on earth —«The Poultry Journal.'