POULTRY-KEEPING

Auckland Star, Volume LVIII, Issue 41, 18 February 1927, Page 14

POULTRY-KEEPING

(By R. J .TERRY.)

ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS.

lIENWIFE (Edendalc). —The croupy cough may be due to bronchitis or roup. If you examine the mouth of the bird you may find a cheesy-like growth at the edge of the opening leading to the lungs. If you can get at it, remove it with a piece of wood and then touch the part with a caustic pencil. If yon cannot find any growth the trouble is probably due to bronchitis. If so. kill the birds when they cease to lay or go into moult, don't keep them over next winter. WORRIED (Manurewa). —I should say that the birds have lice. Dust with a little ground sulphur. AMATEUR (Papakura).—lt is of no use making «n incision on the top of, the swollen foot. You must make a good deep incision underneath the foot. With a small piece of wood remove the calloused pus which will appear like a piece of spongy cheese. Plug the hole with a piece of clean rag dipped In germicide. Tie up the foot so that the plug is not lost and to prevent dirt gettiug in. Remove plug and renew every day for three days. You do not give me much to go on re the chicks dying, but if you do not feed anything except crushed maize when they are a fortnight old that might easily cause the trouble. Feed at least lifts* per cent of hulled oats. Some of the chick feed? are quite good, but you are perfectly safe with the hulled oats. CONTEST (Hamilton). —An egg laying competition commences in April at Papanui. That should meet your requirements. GRATEFUL.—PIeased that I saved you wasting your money, but in all my *ex- . perience I have never known dried" fish to be put on the market for poultry unless the raw product (such as heads, bones, entrails. etc.) cost practically nothing. The uncertainty of the supply kills any other undertaking.

FOR BEGINNERS. E.M. (Milford) asks for information on various points re commencing poultry farming. I will endeavour to answer him in such a manner that it may apply to several others. I have been told that I am ultra careful when giving advice to beginners in the poultry industry. Personally 1 do not think I can be too careful. We all know that there has been a fair number of failures in commercial jMjul try keeping. Most of the failures can be traced to starting oil a largescale without any previous experience. Poultry keeping appears so simple, and so it is, after a few years, and one wonders why they ever made the mistakes that they did in the earlier days. Xot that the experienced man must ever let himself become slack and think that his knowledge cannot be added to, for if he wishes to keep up to date he must be continually thinking out the problem of better housing, stronger stock, and last, but far from least, cheaper feeding, as there is very little margin between the present cost of food and the price returned for eggs. A very large percentage of poultry plants augment their returns by selling sittings of eggs, dav-old chicks, and stock birds, but the beginner cannot expect much returns in this connection during the first two or three years, for his stock must become known.

Although politicians from Premiers downwards will tell poultrykeepers that they should grow their own food, this advice does not work out in practice. One would need to be in a very large way indeed to profitably grow wheat for poultry. It pays to buy the food. Most poultrykeepers beginning cannot afford the plant or ground for grain growing. You will need all the capital that you have in most cases for birds, incubators, houses, etc. The only thing that should be grown is green food, a patch of lucerne if possible, and there is very little ground that will not glow lucerne, if a little brains are used in its treatment. There should also be a good mixture of grass and clover. Just what the mixture should be will depend on the soil and situation. Catch crops can be grown in vacant runs, which will serve the double purpose of giving additional green food and sweetening and renovating the soil. Rape makes a good catch crop, and because of its deeprooting habit is a soil sweetener.

EGG PRODUCTION AND TABLE BIRDS. Egg production is the simplest form of poultry keeping to take up, and at present two breeds stand out and arc easy to procure in numbers, White Leghorns and Black Orpingtons. If you decide to cater for table poultry then one of the best breeds would be White Wyandottes crossed with White Leghorns. The beginner would probably find this cross give better returns than pure white Wyandottes, the eggs of which from certain strains are decidedly on the small side. The cross will lay almost as many eggs as the pure bred White Leghorn, they have better constitution, and will stand forcing for egg production. The cockerels grow more quickly than the pure bred Wyandottes, and carry a much greater percentage of meat than the pure White Leghorns. As hens they arc apt to accumulate internal fat, but that is largely a question of feeding and management. The White Leghorn crossed with the Sussex will also be useful, b>i'. I doubt if it would give the returns that would the White Wyandotte, White Leghorn cross and you have the advantage of the birds being all white. The New Zealand market does not •want, heavy choke table birds. A medium "which could be marketed early in the season gives the best returns. The White Leghorn Black Orpington cross would certinly give you as many eggs, and the eggs might be slightiv larger than those of the White Leghorn, White Wyandotte cross, but the cockerels would not be as plump at an early age, and the birds are mixed colours.

DON'T OVERHATCH. Be very careful not to hatch too many chickens. This is the rock on which many beginners are wrecked. Go slow at the commencement, giving the young stock plenty of room so that they may have an abundance of exercise. In- this direction so much depends on the man. Utilise skim milk if it is available on the ground or adjoining farm. Don't buy it and cart it, it is too risky. If the curd float? don't feed it, if the curd is not above the whey in most cases it is A gallon of good separated milk is equal to about two pounds of mixed grain, so it should be an easy matter for you to work out what you can give your neighbour for it.

THE BREEDING PEN. In mating the breeding pens or the purchase of breeding stock it is better for the beginner to procure second year hens rather than pullets. The experienced poultry breeder does successfully breed from pullets, but he picks well, grown matured birds, which he probably would not sell. Whatever type of poultry house you adopt let the sun and air into it, it is the cheapest food and medicine you can get. , _ t ,-j.