POULTRY KEEPING.

Auckland Star, Volume LIV, Issue 299, 15 December 1923, Page 20

POULTRY KEEPING.

(By R. J. TERRY.)

TO CORRESPONDENTS. DUCKS (Birkcnhead) states iie had a failure with bis last setting of duck e?g3 under hens, wonld I advise him putting any more down, and when would they be likely to lay?— You may saf«ly continue to set dnek eggs, if you have a si ady place for the ducklings, either artificial or natural. They should lay when about six months. WIDOW (Mercer) has been very interested in this column. It is noopssnry that my correspondent augments her income, auil wishes for my candid opinion as to 'he profit to be expected annually from TOO laying hens. You may eafely expect « profit of 10,/ per hen net, that is after all food has been purchased. If. and do not forget I say if, you keep reasonably Rood laj-ers, purchase your food at ordinary market rates nnd market the esgs in a business-like manner, nnd have a general knowledge of keeping poultry. You should have no trouble with 100 birds running on the ground you mentioned. Do not attempt to increase the number till you have thoroughly mastered the management of the first 100. THINK OF THE OTHER FELLOW. A lady correspondent who does not keep poultry, but who lias evidently a sense of humour, judging by the wording of her letter, thinks that some of the poultry-breeders ehouM be shot. ■Last .Monday week Tier husband had two esrgs for breakfast, one of which had etreaks of blood in it, showing that it had been eat -upon by a hen for some few hours at leaet, or-was discarded from an incubator ami marketed by a dishonest person. On the Wednesday morning the top of an ejg was ligntly tapped and it finished the rest of the breaking by itself. Her husband went to work in a temper, and she claims that the baby caught a cold while she was airing the room to get rid of the rffltivia, es she did not wish her husband to have any unpleasant recollection on his return. The lady goes on to Btate: "What is the use of my knowing all I do about poultry and writing to the papers if I cannot make the poultry-breeder provide fresh eggs for a man's breakfast, who has to work hard all the day, not to mention the injustice to the baby.' .

Aβ before mentioned, the letter wae somewhat humorous, but really there is a serious side to it. The poultrybreeders generally are not marketing their produce to the beet advantage. There are very few articles of diet whicn ■will equal the new laid egg produced under normal conditions, and there are few things more objectionable than a stale egg.

fThe hen ie in very few cases to blame. Perhaps one epg in two or three thousand in the full laying season may have a email blood epot, but thfs will be objectionable only to the eye; there ie not any bad taste or odour. A hen may lay an absolutely fresh egg which may have a decidedly objectionable flavour or even smell, due to wrong feeding, and the owner is to blame. Tho continual feeding of musty food will taint the eggs. Certain foods if fed in even email quantities -will flavour tho egg. The question of feeding for really high-class egg production is a subject which we could safely leave for the next couple of years, there is so much work to our hand in improving tho ordinary egg-

The trouble often starts before the egg leaves the nest. The hen which lavs the egg sits on the egg for a little "while, then another hen uses the same nest, sitting on the first egg, and in this manner eight, ten, or a dozen hens may all lay in the one nest. This, especially in the hot weather, is sufficient to start the germ growing, and the keeping quality of the egg is lost. Eggs may also be tainted by the nesting material or by soiled nests, or by keeping the eggs in too warm a situation; for instance,

only a. few days back I saw a number of duck eggs which had been washed, and had evidently been placed in the sun to dry, or they had been wished out of doors early in the morning and forgotten. Now, the keeping qualities of those eggs were sadly deteriorated, and if the eggs had been intended for incubation purposes they would have been a failure. Damp or musty packing material when sending to market deteriorates the quality, also exposure in gunny windows, being exposed for sale adjacent to other products, such as onions, lemons, oranges, and to a lesser degree, apples. It should be remembered that the price of any product is regulated by the demand for the same, therefore it will pay poultry breeders to give more attention to the keeping qualities of the hen fruit, as the Americans term it. It should not be a difficult matter to increase the local consumption of eggs by twenty-five to fifty per cent if we went the right way about it. I hope it will not be necessary for the poultry keepers of New Zealand to go down into the depths which taught the Danes, or the Cahfornian fruitgrowere the lesson of marketing their products on their present high scale. There is no market for any product at the present time so little prospected as the market for eggs. The consumer demands quality in eggs, almost more than in anything else, and it is the hope in every consumer's mind that some day, some time, they will be able to obtain the quality of an egg which they desire. That is the main factor in maintaining consumption at even the level which it has. The consumer wants a definite thing in eggs. The backyard man and the commercial producer have the article which tho consumer wants. Attempts to bridge the gap between the producer and the consumer are being made, but as yet it is only a fringe of the consumers and a very small proportion of producers that are being reached. The producer owes it to himself in a regular business merchandising sense to see that the gap is bridged. The opportunity is here. The Home market awaits us. Aβ large grazing areas are settled, and the production of beef is restricted, it will be found that the consumption of poultry and eggs will vastly increase. I remember the time when the United States shipped poultry to London, but I understand that at the present time they cannot meet their own requirements. The move must come from tho producer. It is more in hie interests than in those of any one else that such improvement should come about. BEXAPHONE.

A correspondent who has been reading an American poultry paper, asks if I think it advisable for him to procure a sexaphone, an instrument which will tell you whether the eggm are fertile or not, aleo, if they will produce pullets or I cockerels? No. The instrument in question has been tested and found wanting. The principle ia that a steel or other metal bullet or ball is suspended at the end of a very thin chain or cord. If you hold it over an egg it in supposed to either swing in circles or straight lines to denote the sex of the embryo contained in the egg. Unfortunately for the instrument, I and others tested it Bofc few years back, and it would swing both ways for the one egg. If you take any small heavy substance, and put it on a few inches of thread of very fine chain, and hold it between the finger and thumb, you will get similar results. At one time the vendore went so far as to claim that they could tell what was originally the sex of a piece of leather by this instrument. When we tested our instrument it certainly gave us the sex of apples, oranges, cricket balls and a door knob, in fact anything that you held it over if you gave the least movement to your hand, it would either rotate or swing straight. Evidently someone is reviving the boom. Dont waste your money.