BROODY HENS.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 248, 19 October 1928, Page 19

BROODY HENS.

VALUE OF GOOD SITTERS.

A SPELL FROM LAYING.

There is often at this time still a chance for the very small poultrykeeper or the juvenile to obtain a fairly good price for an old hen 'because she is a -reliable sitter. Don't miss the opportunity. With the younger broodies one has to use judgment. If they have been laying through the winter months or for some considerable time it will in most cases pay to lef them sit for a while or rear a clutch of chicks. You can dispose of the chicks if you have no room to rear them. By allowing the bird to sit you give her a spell from laying at the time when eggs are the cheapest, and with proper feeding there is more probability of you getting eggs from that hen in the time of scarcity than if she had not. reared the clutch of chicks. It is all a question of what you intend to do with that particular hen at the end of this or next season. If you think she is past the profitable laying stage then break her off the broody propensity and feed her additional meat or albumen meal, that is, if you do not have skim milk or curds. When you are handling a broody hen it is a good opportunity to give her legs a dressing to prevent or cure scaly leg. A little powdered sulphur dusted into the feathers around the vent will check body lice. Hen With Chicks. A correspondent asks how a lien may be prevented from eating the chick food. If you want fresh eggs for your household I don't think it is economy to prevent the hen eating a portion of the chick food, as the substances assist her in again reaching the egg-laying stage, which, in most cases, she will do in about five weeks after the chicks are hatched if she has been well fed. If you really wish to prevent her eating the food put the hen and chicks in a slatted coop, so that the chicks may run out but she cannot. Then place the food a sufficient distance from the coop, so that she cannot reach it. If you cannot do this give her a feed of maize before putting down the chick food. Mites.

Already correspondents are starting to ask for information about the eradication or check of this pest. Some wish to know with what substance they may dust the bird. Dusting the bird would have very little effect. You must treat them in the poultry house as the mites are on the birds only at night, and for this reason their presence is often not suspected. They have the power, as many other sucking insects have, of thinning the blood of the host, enabling them to draw up the blood through the hollow barb with which they puncture the skin. This toxin or poison, which is ejected by the mite to thin down the blood of the fowl, if in sufficient undermines the health of the bird, and may even cause death to sitting hens if the nest is in a fairly dark position. Mites must be dealt with on the woodwork of the perches, nests and buildings. If the timber in which they are living can be got at they can be kept in check, if not eradicated; but it is necessary to pull fixtures to pieces, otherwise when you are dressing the timber the mites simply go back further from the surface. If the building is a large one, or it is lined, then the mites will beat you, unless "the building remains empty for at least twelve months. All the mite and tick family have the ability to sustain life for very long periods without food, or at least without apparent food. When investigating the sheep tick _in Australia I have kept them on a strand of wool in a glass case for ten months, and then the placing of them on the wool of a live sheep would very quickly revive them. It is the same with fowl ticks.- There may be no sign of them in a house; the house may have been kept empty for weeks and months, but if you hold your hand over a crevice within ten minutes the mites will coice to the surface. 1 have fven to drop from the jiftjltrj fadtfag.

evidently attracted by the smell of something living. There is only one fume that I know will kill them, and that is cyanide, but it is somewhat dangerous to use. There are many things which will kill them if you can bring them into direct contact with their bodies. One of the best is a fifty per cent mixture of ki-mite and ordinary kerosene.