POULTRY JOTTINGS.

Auckland Star, Volume XXVII, Issue 156, 4 July 1896, Page 3 (Supplement)

POULTRY JOTTINGS.

When the manure is hard, and a portion of ib ia white, ib indicates a healthy condition of the digestive organs. When the edges of tha comb and wattles are of a purplish red, and the movements sluggish, there is something wrong. If a fowl has a bilious look, with altomato attacks of dysentery and costivonees, ib is suffering with liror complaint. An exchange impresses upon its readers the importance of supplying the fowls with grib in the following words:—'Qrib of some kind musb be given to fowls, or the process of digestion is interfered with, for the bibs ot hard material swallowed by hena serve as teeth to grind up the food before ib enters the stomach. We have fed pounded crockery or glass, and have found is just as good aa gravel or any other grinding material. It does nob matter about tha kind of grib given if ib is broken into pieces the size of small grains of corn or smaller, and is sufficiently hard to grind the grain fed fowls. The reason why we keep harping on grit, and a few other things, is bocause we know thab the average farmer or poultry-keeper does not realise the importance of these, seemingly, iaeiguificanD adjuncts in the proper care of.poultry.' In poultry keeping on a large scale without separate houses and yards ib is almost impossible to properly treat the different classes of poultry. Those in training for egg production, those being prepared for market, and those to be kepb for breeder?, should each have different rations.

A Californian paper reports that a woman who was pestered, as many people are, by other folks' chickens scratching up her flower beds and littering her yard, bib on a novel scheme for conveying a gentle hint to her neighbours. She tied a Job of small cards with strong thread to big kernels of corn, and wrote on the cards: " Please keep your chickens ab home." Tho chickens ate the corn, and carried the message to their owners in a fashion that was startling and effective.