POULTRY NOTES. –

Evening Star, Issue 14308, 5 March 1910, Page 10

POULTRY NOTES. -

Contributions .and questions for answering should be addressed to “Minorca,” Poultry Editor. ‘Star’ Office, and received not later than Tuesday of each week. “Minorca” will onlv answer communications through tins column. Advertisements for this column mysl reach tho office by noon on Thursday. Mr P. Carol!n has returned from his trip to Ilanmcr, and locks a lot bettor for the change. While in Christchurch he visited most of tho leading fanciers, and informs mo that sotn-:- of the breeders have very good specimens. Eggs dropped in price a little last week, hut are now sailing again at Is 6d per dozen. ' Paint the roosts each morning with kercsene. This helps to keep down, lieo and other insect pests. Mrs .Mills is now le tiling in the Lincoln '.cm,petition hy twenty eggs, her bird? hiving laid 1,507, Cameron being second vith 1,287 eggs. Robinson's birds laid twenty-nine eggs, the best for the week. These birds have laid splendidly lately, but- being fifty behind Cameron's it will take them all their time to secure second place, hut if they keep going as they have been doing they will have a fair chance, unless Cameron’s birds improve Of course, .iff (he birds are likely to stop at any time now and go properly into the moult. Padman’s White Leghorn? are leading in the North Island competition with 1.129 e.'e?. Mariell's Black Orpingtons are next with 1,094 eggs. Last, week Air Mark?, of Clyde street, lost a fine Plymouth Rock hen which he bought in Waimate. The hen took first piizc in several shows up there. As tho weather get? colder add a little ground maize to the morning meal, or give a little whole maize at neon, and also a little green hone or lean meal. The latter is better, but ns a rule is more expensive. MOULTING. Owing to the warm weather a number cf birds keep laying, and do not moult. This is nil tight for eggs just now, but the hens -.-annot lay now," moult, and he ready finlaying in .lune, ]hiring the moult clean'dn ;-s is needed. Tim loose feathers favor t l, o breeding of lice, and while? lice and ivd mites are plentiful birds cannot have a successful moult. The addition of a little eulnhur. linseed, and hemp to the morning meal mid charcoal to the grit-box v ill help the birds during this trying period. The pullets which are earliest must now bo brought on to lay to keep np the supply of eggs. Any pullet hatched Li-fore .September is now over six months chi,and it is time she started to lay. If tin ,-e birds are not laying they should be fed with warm food every morning, tho food being as varied as possible. If the birds leave any take it away. At noon give a banditti of outs and some meat food—either cut green bone or lean meat. At 4 p.m. give a good feed of wheat in the litter. Green food, fresh water, grit chav- : (-ill should be regularly supplied. THE VALUE OF TRAP NESTS. The benefits to bo derived from trapivsting your flock, me many. The chief cason for the use of the trap nest by '.-.nciers and utility-breeders is for selecting ;he best layers, and then bleeding from

these only which come up to a certain standard. I do not believe in breeding from the birds which are extraordinary l ivers. This has been found to be a mistake. There, are many other good reasons in favor of the trap nest. To those who have never used them it seems a big work, hut in a small yard it is really not much tiouble. By the rise of tho trap nest you pick out the bad layers. The hens laying very small or badly-shaped eggs can also lie culled out. In the breeding season the trap n.e?t is of the greatest value. Th? birds become tame by being frequently p-indlcd.' Yo-i can set eggs from any bird you fancy, and having marked the chicks vhen they hatch you always Iciiom - from which hen they are bred. It will often be found that eggs from a certain hen will fail to hatch, and that it is a waste of time to -et them, therefore get rid of that lien. When the birds aro being released from the ne?t they can he examined for lice. Any sickness is at once noticeable. When you find pullets from certain hens are exceptional lay cm keep that hen, and breed from her tho following season. Trap nests are easily made. Air Thomson, of Sunnyciest, and Mr Mills, of the Mode! Poultry Farm, both use them, and would be pleased to shoiv any breeder how to make them. Yon don’t need to buy them, but can make them yourselves for a few shillings. DEVELOPING LAYING STRAINS. Considering that quite a number of years Lave elapsed since the systematic breeding of laying strains has Iteen taken up in this umntry, the results have been hardiy commensurate with the expectations then formed. It was (on paper) so ea.-y. Pick out the best layers, and breed only from them, and as individual hens laying 200 eges in the year can be found here and there, it seemed only a matter of time before pens averaging’ 200 eggs in the year should not he common. Y’et they barely exist-. Progress lias been made, but not to the extent anticipated. Only the other day a disgusted poultry-keeper wrote to a contemporary that, owing to the present high price of corn, many poultry-keepers were giving up poultry as unprofitable. Yet the “pedigree layer,” which is plentiful enough in breeders’ advertisements, night to be a little gold mine to her for'.nnato possessor. All of which goes to thow that between theory and practice ;liere is a difference. —Not a .Simple Undertaking.— Developing a laying strain is not quite ?o simple, as it sounds. We must reproduce stamina as well as laying powers, a fact, often forgotten by breeders. As ia. M-eff known, a hen’s most prolific period is the, first year ; indeed, there are breeders who sell off their birds at eighteen months old, not keeping them over the moult. The birds are forced along by stimulating fond to lay, the endeavor of the owner ’■•eing to get all the eggs possible out of them between six and eighteen months old. Thiei may be profitable, that is not the pro-u-nt question, but such birds should not be bred from. In the first place, pullets' eggs, even though the birds are mated with an older male, never produce such strong chicks as hen?’ eggs—that is, birds in their second laying season. Then the better the hens or pullets lay the weaker is the germ. Yet a great many pullets’ eggs arc incubated, and the resulting chickens reserved for stock. Tho breeder M'ho is anxious to get that 200-egg strain—there is no harm in trying for it. anyhow —should never breed from pullets, but from yearling hens, and the stock male should be of a similar age. Pick out the best of the laying pullets, keep them over the moult, mate them the following season ; then stronger chickens will result, there will be a smaller death-rate, and a more satisfactory lot of pullets. —Tho Law of Average.— We must not expect too much in the way of egg averages. An average of 150 from pens of a dozen or so is very good. This is often surpassed. There are probably scores and scores of farmers M'ho do better uven with bigger pens, or fowls kept on

the colony system, but there are, unfortunately, very ninny who do much worse. One must remember, too, that numbers are not everything—the eggs must bo of a saleable size. Hero again the advantage is with hens over pullets. Hens lay a larger egg than pullols, generally speaking. Pullets hatched from pullets’ eggs have a greater tendency to lay undersized eggs. By an undersized egg one under 2oz is meant; that is the size the market likes, an . egg about 2oz in .weight. A great many of the'eggs laid \v “pedigreed layers” fall short of this, and in laying competitions, where duo regard is given to size, as it should be, one frequently sees one pen beaten by another which has laid fewer eggs. "Weight tolls in eggs, which, indeed, ought to be sold by the pound, like meat. —Thu Potent Male Bird. — Let us glance a moment at the subject of the male bird in the breeding-pen. Every resulting pullet will be his offspring, so it is important to select him until care. It is no good putting a carefully-picked lot of layers in a breeding-pen, mating them with a bird from inferior stock, or wo will get no forwarder that season. Do not buy a stock cockerel, quite casually talcing an unknown vendor’s word that ho is of So-and-so’s strain. It is bettor to give two or three times as much for one wo know comes of a good slock and of matured parents. If ! a male bird proves a good stock-getter and his pullets lay well, keep him for a third season. He will most likely be no good for the early part of it. and there will be more unfertile eggs from his pen, but lire chickens ho does sire will probably bo valuable. A final hint on color. Brown eggs are more popular than ever; they fetch in the wholesale market sonic 2s a long hundred more than white or tinted, and retailers often make more. Not enough effort is made to develop laying strains of birds that produce the much-desired chocolatetinted egg. In truth, there are few of them, ll is very hard to get strains of Orpingtons or Rocks or Wyandottes laying eggs of a deep enough color; they are too often merely tinted. Cochins, Brahmas, and Langshaus lay. them, but the former is no longer bred for laying, and there are very few laying strains of Brahmas or Langshaus. But they could K; produced with a little trouble. One need hardly point out the advantage of possessing fowls whoso eggs fetch 2s a- long hundred more than our neighbor, who sells only white or tinted eggs.—‘Agricultural Gazette.’ “TO-DAY’S EGGS.” We notice in a cutting from a Ercncli >aper that a provision merchant in •Vance has been fined for selling eggs under an incorrect designation. It appears that ho exhibited three grades of eggs for sale—namely; fresh, newlaid, and “to-day’s” eggs. It was proved in Court that the to-day’s eggs wore in reality Russian, and for fin’s offence he was lined .£2O. We look forward to tho day when similar prosecutions are made in this country, for it is certain that a very largo number of eggs are retailed as new-laid when they are days old, and in this way tho public arc defrauded. We would like to see this carried still further, and those who expose had eggs for sale prosecuted for selling an article unlit for human consumption. If tho law governing this is necessary in those eases in which the nature and condition of the article being purchased can he noticed at a. glance, it is still more necessary in the case where tho contents of the eggs cannot be examined until they are taken home. We Mould remind our readers that the Board of Agriculture are always Milling to follow up any case in which eggs are sold under a "Tong designation.-— 1 Illustrated Poultry Record.’