SOME NOTES ON HENS.

Press, Volume LXIV, Issue 13105, 2 May 1908, Page 7

SOME NOTES ON HENS.

WITH A PRELUDE OF HOUSE HUNTING. (specialist written- tor "thj? prsss.") Br William Manit, B.A. |"Do yon breed pou'trr sit? You diana? ! Dot then." (Noctos Ambrosuite). Some few years ago, after a quarter of a.century oP collar work, I found myself my own master. "The world was all before mc where to choose-," subject to the trifling limitations that my exchequer was at a low ebb. and that circumstances not remotely connected with health indicated the , desirability of an open air existence. "There's money in sheep/ , discriminating friends informed mc. and I havo not the least doubt there is, only T didn't happen to own any shoep, or know anything more about them than that one frequently encountered them on dusty roads and dinner taiblee, and that you couldn't, as a rulo, run moro than, a hundred or two to the acre. (Perhaps I had better, mention ,that this is intended for a joke, lest some of my readers, etc., offended on the threshold and accompanying mc no farther, miss the rich stores of practical information which await him later on.)

Sheep, I knew, were for the present out of the question, but I had a vague hankering after those twin props of the destitute, fruit and fowls. Only 1 couldn't wait till my trees grew, for in the first place, I hadn't any land to plant them in, and, in the second, my praotical mind (and that's the second time I've used tbp word) de* manded some iepihiero of effort which, should be immediately remunerative. Needless to say, I talked the matter over with all and sundry, and gathered a harvest of the most distraotingly irreconcilable advice. One plausible suggestion, made with an air of mastery, was, "Take an old orchard, and clean it up gradually, six or eight trees a year." This, I must confess, appealed to my sanguine temperament, though, in the light of knowledge painfully acquired, it now seems very much as if one should say, "By way of provisions, take a live sheep, and cut off a rib or two from time to time as you need a chop!" Meanwhile as the days grew into weeks it had. become known to others a* well as to myself that I wanted a small place in- the country, not too remote from civilisation, with a seven or eight-room-ed cottage . and two or three acres of land if possible, well stocked with fruit trees, apples for choice, and in other respects suitable for the culture of the gay domestic fowl. Did I hear of any places? Well, I om indined to think I did. First in order came a poultry man's paradise, houses, fences, coops, drinking troughs? feeding pans, incubator—everything in sliort that tho heart of a well regulated fowl could desire, and in a most quiet neighbourhood. It marched, I learnt on further enquiry, with a cemetery, and its owner had, to put it mildly, found it far from lucrative. In fact, it was a case of forced sale. Now I didn't want to buy, my idea was f rent, or at the outside lease, for alluring though the country be, I had l.ot made up my mind to commit myself to it, "pour jamais," as the sprighitJy Gaul puts it. So I -went no further.

The next eligible offer that turned up was a cottage near a golf links, with twenty acres of very fair land, awd seme of it in fruit trees, genuine old fruit trees, too, as the most casual glance sufficed to show. "How are yon off for water?" I asked the proud proprietor, and with the .air of a man who was playing his trump card ho ler; mo silently to a glen a few stops from the house and pointed, still eloquently silent, to a noble cascade dashing down between wooded banks ioto a wide deep pool. I smiled upon him cheerfully and said, "It has been ruining a good deal lately, hasn't itr What about tho summer? I may tell you I'va lived in New Zealand for some thirty odd years!" He took it like a raan, only remarking, with a glance at my attire (I had contemplated an adjournment to the links) "I took you for a new chum!" And then he ve»y hundsomely admitted that in dry sumir.er weather water was a bit of a problem. Well, to cut a long story short, it began to look as though the "suitable location," the ideal spot, wae not going to materialise, when all of a sudden, like a god out of a machine, a land agent, appeared with a suggestion. Ho knew of a property some miles out of town, near a railway station, close by a village replete with every convenience in tbe way of but* cberies, bakeries, general stores, and what not. consisting of a house, old but water-tight, standing in the midst ot its own trees, well back from the road, and with two or three acres of old apple orchard., . "Eureka!" cried my. wrfe (I doubt if

she knew what it meant), "Let's go and look at it." We Trent. "It had been raining off and on for -weeks. 'We waded through a muddy paddock and found our way through v broken-down gate into a mouldy orchard, kneedeep in the -wettest of wet- gross. \\6 found in die course of our exploration many things, most of them depressing, but we had an eye to the future, and after a few enquiries, satisfactorily answered by the- landlord, we set up our rest to stay.

Theu followed a "parroty" timo as dray after dray debouched with its load of household goods, and the whole place begau to overflow with bos'vvbub I syaro you further details. Suffice it to say, in six months' time- tue place was a going concern, trim, noal. correct in outward appoartnee, with half tho old orchard "out down and stubbed up, long lines of six foot wire dividing off three hup? pens, and in one of them a colony of miscellaneous barndoors and chickens, brought with us from our last, abode. Tho chickens, 1 may add. consistently re-fused to roost indoors, in spito of which, and the luguoriou.i warnings of tho local experts, they came on to lay exactly when they were due, and laid like Trojans, seeing tin winter heroically through in tho bare branches of an old quince- tree, whence many a morning they descended whiU' with frost or drenched with rain. Aft or due deliberation we made up our minds to breed Orpingtons (black), and Wyandottes (silver), and bought of each six hens and one rooster oi goo<J strains, and began. Wo found not tin-, slightest difficulty in buying a.t a price, it wa-s only when we tried to sell that difficulties arose. And even in this respect wo had v fallacious firs' experience-, selling a couple of wellbred roosters wo had by chance among cut chickens for some los each. Our Wyandottes laid nobly from the. start, our Orpingtons., weighty, deliberato fowls, were much more addiittxt to fending and meditation, though even they occasionally recollected that alter 01 , they were hens, and made a f«w days valiant spurt. And so in the iapse of days it came to be the timt for sittings. I had confidently ■ nnn-cipat-cd fuelling enough settings., at 7s 6d a piece to recoup wyseit lor m> original outlay. Jn point of fact, t didn't sell one. This may or may not have, been duo to lack or' push on my part-. 1 only record* facts. Distrusting, not without good reason, my ability to manage an incubator, and hesitating about further expenditure, I decided to d-opond on broody hens. You would hardly believe it, but such is the. ingpatitudo of gallinaceous natures that non-o of my hens would go broody, and when at length I procured'from an obliging neighbour more complacent* specimens, it was only to find that none of my Wyandotte settings wero fertile! Of counsfe the man I had bought from gave mo another rooster, end even provided mc with settings gratis, but the net result wa3 that my birds, instead of being early birds, wore medium late. Now every schoolboy knows (or will know in this happy Dominion, where, thanks to tho most recent syllabus, tho knowledge of things agricultural threatens to become as " wide and general gs the casing air," and the ambidextrous headmaster of tiro futuro is to be cai>able of milking a cow with his left hand, and .annotating Horace with his right;, that tne early bird is the bird that-pays, for it comes on to lay when the egg market is' tight, and prices ere up. Suoh as they "were, however, I found my Silvers began laying at six months, whilo my more stolid, if earlier, Orpingtons 'waited for eight. I liad lots of young'roosters, well marked, badly marked, tHiick-eofc, scraggy, plump and lean, but though one of them shared in a first prize, none of them went off except to the poulterer 'at from Is to Is 9d a. head, prices which, on a email flock, barely meet tlie cost of production and upkeep. Luckily I had kept in mind tho shepherd's sound odvioo: —"Mind you, big nae regular hen-houses," and with " the Ihelp of a skilful friend had run upsucih sheds as I needed on the cheap, using for "breeding pene old packingcases with canvas and « dash of tar over the roof-boardis, and knocking up for general pxirposes ligjht-frained houses covered with rubberoid, put on over tigihtly-stretcbed wire netting. I may add -that experts warned mc rubberoid would prove unsatisfactory, but hitherto I hiave found it good enough, though not impervious to frost.

So far after two seasons, what with sal© of eggs, sale of cockerels, *n<l sale of table hens, I have come to tho conclusion that for an outlay of Is 6d, one can calculate with reasonable certainty on making Is, but during tho last two seasons, and more especially during the latter of the two, the price of food has ranged unusually high,' while there has been no corresponding rise in the price of birds or eggs. The explanation of this disconcerting fact I leare to modern professors. It runs flat in tho face of fne conclusions'l imbibed in. youth from the doctrinaire economists who in those prehistoric days had triumphantly reduced the dismal science to a series of mathematical demonstrations, and talked familiarly of buying in tho cheapest and. selling in the dearest market as if it were a matter of everyday experience, which no doubt for most of us it is—with the terms reversed! !

But this is a digression and unprofitable, and besides, I was nearly forgetting my ducks. For pure joy there is nothing like ducks. Given plenty of shade when young you can rear them with case! even in, the hottest weather, when once you have induced them to hatch. I myself have been unlucky in hatching, and this season I found quite a large number of ducklings egg-bound, by which erroneous term I mean to convey "unable to break their shells." For egg producing the Indian Runner seems to be the favourite breed, but for table purposes, good •humour, and general aff ability give mc the Rouen! A fe-w Rouens in your garden will clear it of snails and slugs, and incidentally, as far as my own experience of lettuce, cabbage, peas, cucumbers, and ajiywung dee esculent and succulent it may happen to contain. And further with regard to ducks, if you have hardened your heart sufficiently to kill one, get someone else to pluck it. v A duck has really more feathers than it needs. I never realised what a truthful person the late Recorder of Chester was till I plucked my first duck.

A few practical words in conclusion: 1. Keep down initial expenses unless £ - ou are able to embark on poultry rearing on the> grand scale. I wasn't. 2. Don't be carried away by the eloquence of poultry magazines or poultry erports. The latter have much in common with authorities on mining. 3. And abovo all, when setting eggs, ascertain that none of them are hard boiled. Soft boiling may not interfere •with hatching; I have 'not tried'that experiment. Hard boiling does.