Excerpt from A Practical Guide to the Breeding, Feeding, Rearing General Management: For Domestic Use and Exhibition, of the Houdan Fowl The abominable fifth claw, which I suppose must be ih sisted on as a mark of purity of the breed, is by no means a certainty, as many chickens come out four-clawed, and would not be difficult to breed out; but I must say, as far as my observation extends, it has not in this breed the detrimental effect it has on our highly-bred Dorkings, much of whose tendency to disease of the foot and claw I attribute to this monstrosity. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.