Poultry: A Practical Guide to the Choice, Breeding, Rearing, and Management of all Descriptions of Fowls, Turkeys, Guinea-fowls, Ducks, and Geese, for Profit and Exhibition.Piper, Hugh
Science
Poultry: A Practical Guide to the Choice, Breeding, Rearing, and Management of all Descriptions of Fowls, Turkeys, Guinea-fowls, Ducks, and Geese, for Profit and Exhibition.
Piper, Hugh
Poultry -- Breeding
The flesh is excellent, but the body is small compared to that of the
Dorking. They very seldom show any inclination to sit, and if they hatch
a brood are bad nurses. The chickens are very delicate, and are best
hatched at the end of April and during May. They do not feather till
almost three-parts grown, and require a steady mother that will keep
with them till they are safely feathered, and therefore the eggs should
be set under a Dorking hen, because that breed remains longer with the
chicks than any other. They almost always have white feathers in the
flight of the wings, but these become black.
"In purchasing Spanish fowls," says an excellent authority, "blue legs,
the entire absence of white or coloured feathers in the plumage, and a
large white face, with a very large, high comb, which should be erect in
the cock, though pendent in the hen, should be insisted on." Legginess
is a fault that breeders must be careful to avoid.
The cockerels show the white face earlier than the pullets, and a blue,
shrivelly appearance in the face of the chickens is a better sign of
future whiteness than a red fleshiness. Pullets are rarely fully
white-faced till above a year old. "The white face," says an excellent
authority, "should always extend well around the eye, and up to the
point of junction with the comb, though a line of short black feathers
is there frequently seen to intrude its undesired presence. It is
certainly objectionable, and the less of it the better; but any attempt
to remove or disguise this eyesore should be followed by immediate
disqualification." Some exhibitors of Spanish shave the down of the
edges of the white-face, in order to make it smooth and larger. This
disgraceful practice is not allowed at the Birmingham Show.
"One test of condition," says Mr. Baily, "more particularly of the
pullets, is the state of the comb, which will be red, soft, and
developed, just in proportion to the condition of the bird. While
moulting--and they are almost naked during this process--the comb
entirely shrivels up."
The White-faced WHITE SPANISH is thought to be merely a sport of the
White-faced Black Spanish. But, whatever their origin may have been,
they possess every indication of common blood with their Black
relatives, and their claims to appear by their side in the exhibition
room are as good as those of the White Cochins and the White Polish. The
plumage is uniformly white, but in all other respects they resemble the
Black breed. From the absence of contrast of colour shown in the face,
comb, and plumage of the Black Spanish, the White variety is far less
striking in appearance.
The ANDALUSIAN are so called from having been brought from the Spanish
province of Andalusia. This breed is of a bluish grey, sometimes
slightly laced with a darker shade, but having the neck hackles and tail
feathers of a glossy black, with red face and white ears. The chickens
are very hardy, and feather well, and earlier than the Spanish.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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