OUR POULTRY COLUMN

Gisborne Times, Volume XXXVI, Issue 3450, 30 September 1913, Page 8

OUR POULTRY COLUMN

NEWS AND NOTES. Change ycur poultry run once or twice a year, if you have sufficient ground to do so. Dig up and plant the old runs with greenstuff—peas or beans. This will sweeten the ground and improve the health of the fowls. Drainage is a necessity ,for the location of a chickenhcuse. Young fowls cannot stand wet, damp houses. Canadian pon’trynien have been using electricity instead of gas for the incubator. The former gives the steodier heat.

You may tell fresh eggs in this way. Place in a basin of cold water. If the egg sinks to the bottom and stays there, it is fresh. If it floats off the bottom at all, the freshness is doubtful ; and if it floats on the surface the egg is quite bad. Do not let any surplus males eat up the profit. Keep enough for breeding purposed, and no more. If the others cannot be sold for breeding uses, get them into condition for the market. Let your motto be this year:“Fewer birds, better quality.” Nothing but the beset will do nowadays. A poor c’ass bird eats as much as, if not mere then, a first-class hen, and is a much trouble to look after, and produces 50 per cent, fewer eggs, generally speaking. If! you keep fowls, why not keep good ones? The fowls in the ordinary back-yard are frequently too fat. They get aM the house scraps, bran and pollard, and wheat—too much food in fact—and are confined in a small' space, with no opportunity for exercise. No matter how well ventilated a coop may be, it is impossible for the air to be pure and healthful unless the inside of the coop is kept perfectly clean. The nearer poultry are kept in a natural state the more hardy will they be. It was this fact that led up to the invention of the scratching-shed house p’an. The soil in the poultry yard *s better to be of a porous nature, preferably of a sandy type. In locating the sit© for the poultry building it is well to select a spot where there wiR be a natural drainage away from the building. Chicken houses should be os well kept, relatively, as the home. Chickens thrive no better in filthy, unhealthful suroundings than do people, and filthy poultry houses breed disease and vermin. Dry feeding-all the time makes a strong muscular bird, on the lean, tough side, and has many advocates.

In bringing up chickens, dry feeding for the first month gives the best results as a rule. It is quick and clean—the latter is a big thing with young chic hens. A poultry-rearer at Doruremy, France, has discovered that by mixing pepper with the food of fowls their plumage turns pink, which changes to a vifvid scarlet about an hour before a- coming thunderstorm. REARING CHICKENS.

It is one tiling to have a successful hatching, and another, equally important, is to see that the chicks thrive and grow rapidly. Insects are eagerly sought for by fowls, and tlie latter do we’l on this form of food. Where this cannot be procured, the following is an efficient substitute:— Hang a bit cf meat, cooked or raw, m an exposed place, where the blow flies can get at it. The chickens will feed greedily on the infested meat and grow wonderfully well. Another excellent food for young chicks and moulting hens is buttermilk which makes the plumage glossier and S-oduces longer and stronger feathers. eat scraps are also an excellent ration, but they should be fed sparingly to young pullets, which often lay too soon on a meat diet. Green food is an essential to growing fowls. It contains considerable ash and earth salts, end it also has acid that renders' the mineral matter in other foods soluble.

SOME POULTRY FALLACIES. Some people have an idea tht artificially hatched chickens are not. so strong as those hatched by hens, while others go sa far as to say that they are quite useless fer breeding purposes This is a fal’acy. as it does not affect the birds in the least. It is about the same as the idea some folks have that hens will not lav «t all unless they have a male bird with them. This is altogether wrong ; they will lay just as well without a cockbird as well as with one, and the eggs will keep longer where they are not fertilised ; in fact, double the time. A male bird keeps the hens together, and of course, it is ore natural for the hens to have a companion. A pen pen always looks complete when a nice male bird is strutting about. When hens have their liberty it is much the best plan to have a male with them ; if not, they are apt to sray too far away, and the owner losses a large number of eggs which causes a loss. Then, again, in cases where cottages have a pen of birds to run abotit on waste ground where others are running, if they have no male bird they almost sure to he coaxed away by others. The male bird of the other party will entice them to accompany his hens, and they will do so. In such cases, the eggs will be laid away from homeland the | birds will come back to roost and feed.

BRASSO