Poultry Keeping

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 266, 9 November 1928, Page 19

Poultry Keeping

By R. J. TERRY

ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS.

CONCERNED.—You do not conform to rules giving your name and address, which need not be for publication.

INQUIRER. —You may be feeding rather too much meat. When blood spots or streams are frequently found in eggs it is invariably due to too stimulating a diet. The white of an egg is really the hen's blood, and If the oviduct is too stimulated there is not sufficient time to convert it. Give less ordinary food for a few days, but an abundance of green food.

A.8.J.—1 cannot reply direct. I have had to discontinue the practice some time ago, and I only break the rule where there is a serious outbreak of a contagious disease amongst poultry. Leave the mother hen with the chicks till she again lays, but in most cases she will desert them herself. Hulled oats, mash once a day, plenty of green stuff, a fair amount of exercise is all that is necessary to grow sturdy chicks at this time of the year. I don't like the idea of feeding wood lice. Worms and general insects are quite all right. The chicks seem to be having dust baths very early. It might be as well to handle one or two and see if there are any signs of lice. Give the chicks grit at once if your I ground Is not naturally gritty. Coarse sand, or even road sweepings will do.

KARETU ROAD.—I cannot visit poultry runs. Write me full details and I will endeavour to answer you through this column. State if the droppings are watery, yellow or greenish. Examine a dead bird and see if there is a ruptured blood vessel in the oviduct or egg passage.

J.H.H.—Fowls do not lay at a certain age. whether they be heavy or light breeds; they lay at a certain stage of development. Some feeders of poultry reach this sta>;e earlier than others, therefore their birds gain a reputation. You may successfully hatch chicks from first-year pullets if they are well grown, but use an adult male. You can fatten ten-week-old chicks with finely ground maize and skim milk, or with small potatoes, skim milk and a little fat, or sharps, potatoes and a little fat. The chicks will fatten in about four weeks. There could be nothing wrong with the incubator if some of the eggs hatched perfect chicks. If they were just ordinary eggs, not selected eggs, some of the hens may have been laying for some time, and the eggs, lacking certain essentials, were dead in the shell.

MANGERE.—It is remarkable that eggs hatched after being left by the hen two days and nights, but it is wonderful how the embryo will regain vitality when brought in contact with warmth after it has been growing for twelve or fourteen days. You would be unwise to bother with the crippled chick. The delay in hatching was due to the chill.

TO SEVERAL CORRESPONDENTS.—You have a certain amount of my sympathy re the low price of eggs, but if you had followed the advice that I have repeatedly given during the last few years and made the consuming public thoroughly conversant with the value of an egg .and had given the public a reliable egg, there would have been a greater demand, and therefore higher prices. It 1r not too late yet, but it rests with yourselves.