POULTRY NOTES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 28, 3 February 1939, Page 14

POULTRY NOTES.

Ha magic of science ON AMERICAN TEST FARMS. (By ORPIXGTOX.) - A few weeks ago I saw a farm labourer (he was really a Ph.D., in disguise) dropping eggs on the concrete floor of a lien house and laughing with pleasure when they didn't break: When they did, the yolks were red, white or blue (writes George Kent iu "Country Home").•A few Jiundred miles from that freakish farm'l saw another genius in overalls grin from ear to ear when he discovered through thick-lenscd glasses that his production charts showed a sharp debline in milk yield for the .month. And when he mixed feed for his. live stock—dehydrated oranges for one,' salmon oil for another, crab scrap, cayenne : pepper and so on—he looked positively maniacal.

On- still another farm, I encountered a first-rate farmer who was cheering on hundreds of thousands of grasshoppers and potato bugs as they multiplied and destroyed his crops.

All of which may sound utterly erazj r to you, but, knowing what I know, I can . assure you that there's method in this madness. I have just finished a tour of a dozen scientific wonderlands, and my eyes are still popping with amazement. Those wonderlands, scattered over the United States, are the little-known but tremendously important test farms upon which manufacturers of stock feeds, stock medicines, insecticides and farm chemicals try. out and prove the worth of their products before they ofTcr them for sale to the American farmer. Privately operated, those test farms form an invaluable supplement to Government and State experimental stations, and, without fanfare, are contributnig much to the advancement of agricultural science in America to-day. Hard-Shelled Eggs. Hard-shelled eggs may seem fantastic, but not when one considers how many eggs are broken in shipment every year. Red, white and blue yolks are not, as you may suspect, for the purpose of strengthening the morale of the army. They may be used to colour cakes and other desserts naturally, if you get over your squeamishness. These discoveries, and many more just as amazing, are the result of feeding experiments oil test farms. My friend who smiled over a decline of milk yield was not guilty of lunacy. He had left one ingredient from his stock feed for a month. That ingredient, he suspected, had been responsible for an increased 'mill: yield the month before. The experiment, with its negative result, proved it. And the maniacal farmer who raises grasshoppers and potato bugs merely is waiting until his pests are legion before he takes after them with a new insecticide spray. In my strange tour I have seen farm animals living strange lives and dying fantastic deaths. I found farm accounts being balanced, not in dollars and cents, but in figures and observations recorded in the notebooks of scientists. Before mv eyes were solved many of the mysteries of life and death, profit and loss, that lie hidden in the food value of a forkful of fodder and a scattering of thicken feed. Fighting Coccidiosis. Tn one test I saw conducted on a California commercial experimental farm I breathlessly stood by while the fate of 100,000 chickens hung in the balance. It was a living experiment to prove the power of a new disinfectant designed to prevent the spread of the deadly chicken plague, coccidiosis. If the test succeeded the myriad chickens in the vast experimental barns lived, and the new product would go on the market to become a sturdy barrier against the fatal disease and a boon to the chicken industry. However, if it failed, 100,000 chickens would die. The experiment was a big scientific gamble, typical of the sort, which manufacturers must make before they put their product 011 the market. Troughs full of sawdust, saturatec with the disinfectant, were placed at the doors of this chicken house populated by 100.000 hens. Mesh gratings wore installed along passageways which separated the liens from visitors. Then, although the death-dealing coccidiosis was rampant in the community, the scientists invited thousands of farmers, many of whose flocks were infected by the dread disease, to walk through the chickcn house. -The infection, science knew, was on their shoes.

But each guest was required first to step through the trough of disinfectant and to stay behind the mcsli wire, which prevented anyone from sneezing, coughing or breathing at a chicken. For days the experiment .went on and for many days afterward the scientists breathlessly watched for the first symptom of coccidiosis. Xot one hen was infected The product Was ready for market.

Condensed food pellets—we're always reading ijbout tlicm as the ideal meal of the future. But never, until X visited a test farm in Nebraska, did I imagine condensed food would take the shape of an e£g. By the simple process of feeding the hens the riglit food, experts on this farm were producing vitamins A, D and G and any minerals which they wished to have.