A FOWL'S LIFE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 220, 17 September 1938, Page 9

A FOWL'S LIFE.

KEEPING AXE AWAY.

SCIENCE ON THE FARM.

VACCINATION FOR THE HENS.

(By F.F.)

Once upon a time if a hen laid an egg * that tu that, and if the hen didn't lay an egg that was that, too. Now, how- - ever, the life of the average hen is not J so easy going. Life is not all meatmeal 1 and pollard, Ufa strictly a case of! business. The# march of progress has not stopped short at the chicken run, and though we still can't tell you which came first—the chicken or the egg—it is a modem poultrykeeper's axiom that, given a hen, if the egg doesn't come the hen goes. Ia fact, if ifft not exactly a dog's, life, it's a fowl's life, which is just about as bad. However, there are compensations. An egg a day keeps the chopper away, and io long as Priscilla hen takes her annual holidays at the proper time, when eggs are cheap, no one complains much. While she works Priscilla is quite the lady. The poultryxnan, aided by modern science, does all he can to see that everything is just so. But when the production drops well that's another and sadder story. From Dozens To Thousands. There was a time, too, when mother used to fuss about with a dozen eggs and a broody hen. Or sometimes the lion would disappear for a week or so, then out she would coine from the bla<K borrv bushes with a clutch of fine chicks trailing after her. They would take their chance with life and the famiiy would spend hours counting the pullets, if not before they were hatched, at least before they were old enough for even an expert to distinguish male from female. 1

Now science has stepped in and Priscilla is no longer required to raise her own families. The whirring hum of an electric motor has replaced Priscilla's matronly cluck. Chickens are hatched in batches of thousands, not dozens. Mammoth incubators will produce a weekly hatch of 500 or more chicks, while the capacity of the largest is 10,200 eggs. Qiant battery brooders, heated by electricity, or steam, or by lamp in specially made modern buildings, care for the chicks until they are old enough to be transferred to the open.

Priscilla is really rather pampered. More than a little careful planning and scientific thought goes into the preparation of her rations and the lay-out of her home.

Priscilla probably first met the ecientist in person when, a few hours out of , the incubator, she passed through the hands of the chick sexers. A few quick deft movements of long Bupple fingers 1 and she was put aside as a future egg producer. It takes just three seconds ; per chick for the experts to determine , the sex. They will handle np to 2;>0,000. chicks in a season, working with apparent ease, but in the constant glare of | powerful lamps. Fate of the Hales. Chickens all look alike to most people. Just little balk of golden fluff which! never seem to stay in the same place for more than two seconds, eat at a 1 prodigious rate and keep up a constant cheeping. It seems a shame, but when the sexes have been determined as many. as a thousand chicks from a big hatch will be destroyed. The males have a nominal value of twoppnee, except in the case of pedigree stock, but there is very little market for them. As a future eg? producer, Priscilla has little to fear for the next two or three year«. She will be fed on a scientifically balanced diet, specially planned for maximum eg? production. She may even pet a daily ration of cod- ! liver oil. And vaccination! The modern fowl early in her career is inoculated with a serum which protects her from | colds, fowl pox and roup. There comes [ a day, however, when even the best t layer lays no more. Then ... oh well, A frw.ir«m stew is -not so bad.