POULTRY HANDBOOK

Evening Post, Volume CV, Issue 142, 16 June 1923, Page 17

POULTRY HANDBOOK

"Poultry don't pay" is the usual rejoinder made by those who have tried the industry when they are confronted with high-priced eggs and dear table birds. Mr. George H. Ambler, who has had over 30 years at the game, shows why poultry is so often a losing proposition. The fact, as he shows in "Utility Poultiiy Farming in New Zealand" (Whitcombe and Tombs, Wellington) is that it is a serious business and calls for strictly business methods in conducting it. He endeavours in this bertutifullyprinted book tc help the beginner. He deals with the strictly utilitarian side of the paultry-Taisiug business. He shows all the difference between keeping a halfdozen hens and a rooster to help eat up the household scraps, and raising birds and eggs as a commercial undertaking. First he describes the breeds and their characteristics—fowls, ducke, geese, and turkeys. Then he describes their ailments and what to do with sick birds, lie aUo provides a calendar of work,' as applying to- New Zealand. Diagrams are given of hen houses, incubator plants, and other structures connected with the successful raising of .eggs and table-birds. The illustrations of birds are from photofraphs of the best types, some of them eing famous in recent poultry history, including an Indian Runner duck which laid an egg a day for a full 12 months, excepting two days—a world record.