The Effects of Dubbing White Leghorn Males

Abstract THE practice of dubbing White Leghorn males, or removing their combs and wattles, has become routine with many poultrymen in regions where there is danger of injury to the combs and wattles by freezing. The prevention of such injury with its resultant infertility (Payne and Ingram, 1927), as well as the discomfort presumably associated with large combs and wattles exposed to temperatures almost, but not quite, low enough to freeze those appendages, seems to be ample justification for dubbing. However, there are also some experimental data and the opinions of numerous poultrymen which indicate that under certain conditions dubbing is not only protection against injury by frost but may also influence directly the body weight, the size of testes, and the general vigor and aggressiveness of breeding males. If such effects are desirable ones and can be shown to be consistent, they might justify more general use of dubbing, especially . . .