One might object that, as far as the head is concerned, doing this means that a certain number of inappropriate features remain in my stock

7. The Genetic of the italian giant frill . 2.

One might object that, as far as the head is concerned, doing this means that a certain number of inappropriate features remain in my stock. This is true, but it doesnít worry me, because the typicality I have achieved, and which I can always resort to with appropriate pairings, provides a guarantee of the maintenance of a stock which, despite a slight residual heterogeneity, is able to provide every year a remarkable proportion of subjects with complete, voluminous hoods. In my view, this is the maximum that can currently be obtained in terms of the features of this breed, as it is of those of the Parisian. I want to underline that the key to this racial improvement is the recruitment into an increasingly-purer stock (and the individual exemplars that come from it every year) of the maximum number of those numerous "small mutations" that underlie quantitative heredity. It's worth emphasising this concept of recruitment because it also includes those "modified genes" that genetics has been talking about for years, "secondary genes" from the sum total of which a feature manifests itself to the full.

Amongst these "partially contributing genes", most of which are inherited from the Parisian, there is certainly one, two, ten, I wouldnít know how many, that are present only in the Italian Giant Frill and are responsible for the tendency of the plumage to be turned towards the front.

I think my stock - and undoubtedly that of other breeders as well - has "recruited" many, if not all, of these "small contributions", and this is what guarantees the stability of a "stock".