POULTRY COLUMN.

Dominion, Volume 16, Issue 177, 14 April 1923, Page 24

POULTRY COLUMN.

TOO MANY MALES There are mysterious folk who say that with the aid of a needle suspended on a piece of cotton, they fortell the sex of an egg. If the needle, when hold over the egg, pendulum fashion, swings to and fro, that egg, they declare will assuredly hatch out into a cockerel: if it circles round and round, a pullet will result. Sounds simple, doesn’t it? And how useful! All that most of us want, when we do a bit of hatching, is a sufficient number ot layers to replace those that are too old for work. So it would seem all we have to do is to submit each egg in a settinn- to the needle and cotton test, retain the “female” eggs, and serve up the “cockerel” eggs for breakfast without bothering tlio mother hen with them Unfortunately, though, with the most of us the notion doesn’t sedm to work out quite like that; the only motion the needle has in my case is the wobble imparted to it by the excited trembling of my hand! Anyway, in pretty well every poultry run now, there are just about as many cockerels as there are pullets, and the problem still remains: AV hat shall be done with the former? Of course in a few weeks they must be killed; you can only sell them when you have a name as a poultry breeder and keep the purest and most prolific of breeds. The trouble, though, is that if you take a cockerel haphazardly from the crowd and kill it off just whenever you have a fancy for roast chicken, you usually find the bird is little else but skin and bone, and is rather tough in the bargain. You see, all cockerels are gallant little fellows; when run with the. pullets they will courteously hang back at feeding time until the ladies have had their fill, and will, too, often forego even tho little tit-bits that are to be found about the run. A far better notion, then, is to put the birds that arc required for the table through a short fattening process. This is neither complicated nor expensive. Hero’s the idea: Start by picking the plumpest bird you can find, then a mediumfleshed bird, and, lastly a, thin one. Put these three together into a coop lar<>-e enough to permit them to stand upright and-move about comfortably. Cockerels like companionship and fatten better in threes than when alone. Feed them three times a clay on a mash composed of ground oats made into a paste with tho aid -of sour skim milk or ordinary milk and water, half and half—if you can afford this mixture; it helps to produce beautifully white and tender flesh and plenty of it. If ground oats and milk are too expensive for you, though, then a mixture of middlings, barley meal, and maize meal in equal proportions mixed with water, or milk and water is a fairly good substitute, • especially if a little fat—-a quarter of an ounce for each bird, split up among the three meals every day— is added to it. Ordinary fat obtained from the butcher and melted

down is good enough, so, too, is dripping. Watch the birds carefully at each meal to seo how they are taking their food. They should have just as much as tbev will eat at a sitting when they fastidiously pick over what remains it is time to remove the food trough. You must guard against sickening the birds by over-feeding them. Of course, they will need to have grit always before them, and a bit of greenstuff every day, the former to help them digest their food, and the latter to keep them fit. You’ll find that after a week of this special feeding the plumpest or the throe cockerels you penned up will be fit to kill; the medium-fleshed bird will probably take a fortnight to fatten, and the thinnest of them will want three weeks before he makes a respectable roast. Directly one bird is killed off another should take his place, so that if all goes well you have a fat bird ready every week, until the supply of cockerels is exhausted. _ It should be rememeberOd that a chicken has to be starved for 24 hours before. it is k lled, and that a newly-killed bird is much more easily plucked than one which has been left to cool for some hours. If you can’t pluck a bird immediately after it has been killed then bang it in some cool place for 24 hours before you start pulling out the feathers. By the way, in case you may be thinking of keeping some of your cockerels for breeding next year, let me add that in the usual way one male bird to every eight or ten females is quite enough. . . When chickens feather very slowly it is not always altogether a bad thing, as such birds often turn out to be the best in the long run. Of course, the process must. not be too protracted. The addition of one-sixth part linseed to the mash (by weight) will assist greatly in the formation of the new feathers. On the other hand,. the chickens may have feathered all right, and then owing to the presence of insects may have lost them. To °^ er ' come this, dust the birds very thoroughly with a disinfectant powder, which should be rubbed well down to the skin. Any . bare parts should be rubbed with vaseline. See that the house and run are clean, and dip the ends of the perches into paraffin oil. Also, if this be the case, add the linseed to the mash as stated above.

POULTRY CHAMPIONSHIP Nelson, April 6 The Board of Management of the New Zealand Poultry Championship Association ■ met to-day. Tho Masterton Club’s application for affiliation was granted, the show dates being July 13 and 14. , The standard schedule was revised. It will be issued in due course. Tho ballot foe. championships resulted as follows: — Wellington, No. 1 Group.—Modern game, fancy Wyandottes (silver, gold, or partridge), utility Wyandotte, magpies, Norwich canary N.C. fed. Masterton, No. 2 Group—Hamburgs, utility Leghorns, fancy Butt Orpingtons, owls, Japanese bantams. Blenheim, No. 3 Group.—American brown Leghorns, utility and fancy Rhode Island reds, Oriental frills, black rosecomb bantams. Nelson, No. 4 Group.—Fancy and utility Orpingtons, tumblers, U.K. game bantams, mules. Hastings, No. 5 Group.—English Loghorns, fancy Minorcas, fantails, iekin bantams, Norwich crested or crest-bred canaries. Woodvillu, No. 6 Group.—O.E. game, fancy white Wyandottes, American white Leghorns, dragoons, modern game, bantams. Napier, No. 7 Group.—Fancy 'and utility, Plymouth Rocks. Anconas, homers, Yorkshire canary N.C. fed. The ballot for cat championships resulted in Wellington's being allotted Persian males, and Hastings Persian females.