Sex and Season
A great sportsman assures me (in answer to a query of mine) that there are what he calls cock years and hen years— that is exceptional seasons which encourage the production of one sex and not the other. The point was raised the other day when the bag was surveyed after a pheasant-shoot. Out of 127 birds 116 were found to be cocks, and since the cock is harder to shoot than the hen the percentage of sexes was not due to marksmanship. This excess of cocks is, of course, common in shoots for which poults are purchased from the game farms, which naturally like to get rid of their cocks and keep their hens. At the shoot in question all the birds were either wild or home-reared. Poultry-keepers ought to have views on the subject. One of the great advances in poultry- keeping of late years has been the production of crosses in which the sex of the day-old chick can be detected at sight. The advance was due largely to the fine work of the Mendelians of Cambridge University.
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