Exhibition quality and value. The winning of a prize at an important show gives a breeder of fancy birds a standing that he could not otherwise acquire. The greater part of the sales of poultry of this class are made by mail to persons who do not know the breeder personally and do not see his stock until after purchasing. No matter how good his stock may be, those who want to buy will not pay much attention to his claims for its superior quality until they have such confirmation of those claims as is given by the winning of prizes in competition. Then the prices which a breeder can get for his stock will be regulated largely by the prices obtained by other successful exhibitors at shows of the same class.
There is a wide range of prices from those that can be secured for stock of the quality that wins at the greatest shows, to those that can be obtained for the kind that wins at ordinary small shows. High prices are paid for noted winners and for other stock of the same breeding, as much for the advertising value of ownership of fine stock as for the actual value of the birds to breed from or to exhibit again. A breeder who wins at some very small show may find it hard to sell either stock or eggs for hatching except at a slight advance over market prices. Some breeders who have made remarkable records in winning at the best shows can get very high prices for their prize-winning stock and for the eggs from it. Fowls sometimes sell as high as $500 each, and eggs at $2 each. Pigeons also bring very high prices at times, although fewer people are interested in them and sales are not so numerous. The ordinary prices for good stock are quite reasonable, considering how few really fine specimens are produced. The average novice finds that fowls at from $10 to $25 a trio and pigeons at from $5 to $15 a pair have all the quality that he can appreciate.
In the early days of modern fancy poultry culture those breeders who had great reputations could get relatively high prices for almost any bird that would pass as a breeding specimen of its kind. This is still true of breeders who successfully introduce new varieties or who suddenly attain prominence with stock of their own breeding. But as the stock of a leading breeder becomes widely distributed among smaller breeders, the competition of his customers reduces his sales, and especially the sales of the cheaper grades of stock. The most troublesome problem that the best breeders have is to get rid of the lower grades of their stock at a fair profit.
Why good breeders have much low-priced stock. Novices in the breeding of fine stock commonly suppose that all pure-bred stock of any variety is of uniform quality. When they learn that, as a rule, only a small part of the young birds hatched from good stock is considered of superior quality, they often conclude that the ideas and the standards of fanciers must be wrong. Even professional and scientific men who become interested in fancy poultry and pigeons often take this view and, after considering the question carefully from their standpoint, try to explain to fanciers how, by changing a standard, they might secure a much larger proportion of specimens approximately perfect according to the standard used. In the case of varieties in which the finest specimens of the different sexes are secured from different matings, many novices waste a great deal of time trying to convince old fanciers that their standards and methods are illogical and unnatural.
To those who do not understand the philosophy of the interest in breeding to highly specialized types the arguments for standards that are adjusted to common results and are easy to attain appear to be unanswerable. Upon the fancier who does understand this philosophy they make no impression at all. The breeding and exhibiting of fancy stock of any kind is primarily a game. The rules of the game are in a measure arbitrary, like the rules in baseball or football or any other game. At the same time they must be framed in the interests of the development of the game as a sport and also as a spectacle. They must be reasonable and must be suited to players of all degrees of skill.
Standards and rules for judging fancy stock develop just as the rules of athletic games develop. A generation ago such games as baseball and football were comparatively simple games in which boys and men might take very creditable parts without devoting a great deal of attention to practice. These games still afford recreation to many who use them for that purpose only, but they have also been developed so that players of exceptional skill play competition games for the interest of a public which studies the fine points of these games and compares the abilities of the players. People who take an interest in and patronize professional or high-class amateur ball games do so because in them skillful and well-trained players do difficult things. It is the same in the breeding of fancy live stock to a high standard of excellence. When a breed or a variety is first made, the interest of the breeders centers in a few characters, precisely as the interest of a novice in any line centers in a few prominent features. As breeders grow in experience and in skill, and as the characters to which they first give special attention become fixed, they demand better quality in these and also turn their attention to the development of other characters. The more difficult a combination of characters is to produce, the greater interest the fancier takes in trying to produce it. When a standard calls for a high degree of excellence in many characters, the proportion of specimens of high excellence, as measured by that standard, will almost always be small. It is because this is the case that the rare specimens are considered so valuable.
Fancy and utility types in the same variety. The great majority of American breeders of fancy poultry seek to secure a high degree of practical value in combination with fancy quality in their stock. There are some fanciers who breed only for fancy points, and some market poultry growers who pay no attention at all to them, but as a rule those who give market poultry special attention want well-bred stock of good ordinary quality, and those who keep poultry for pleasure want the flock kept for this purpose to supply at least their own tables with eggs and meat. The breeder who wishes to combine fancy and utility properties in any kind of live stock must breed only from specimens that are meritorious in both directions, selecting much more carefully than when breeding for one class of properties.