POULTRY NOTES

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLVI, Issue 111, 10 April 1926, Page 11

POULTRY NOTES

(By “Brooder.”) Of late quite a number of authorities have found it necessary to call attention to warn poultry keepers regarding the excessive use of green stuff. Now, there is a saying that you can have “too much of a good thing” and it is an instance thereof when poultry keepers in their zeal to keep feeding costs down feed any kind of green stuff in tho hope that, so long as the birds are filled, all has been done that is necessary to keep thorn in health and a condition suitable for high production of eggs. They are disappointed when results prove otherwise. This topic is engaging tho minds of Australian poultrymen and one authority definitely states that the only way to cut the cost of production is to get better K’ action, adding that by filling the up with green stuff and depriving them of sufficient foods containing the material they need for bodily functioning and egg making, depreciates the number laid. Green stuff is needed to get the best out of the solid foods and not as a substitute. To regard it as a food in itself was almost as big an error as depriving the birds of it altogether. The old controversy, wet masli v. dry mash, is for ever cropping up somewhere. There are those who think that the dry mash system is a lazy man’s why, but -'lien there are thousands of birds to be fed this opinion is ruled out of court for anything which will reduce labour in a poultryman’s routine of many details is well worth considering. “In the last Burnley competitions,” says the Utility Poultry Journal, “of 7000 eggs from teams of white Leghorns fed on wet mash only 66.7 per cent, were first grade eggs. In the single pens the figures were 70.6 for wet mash and 78.6 per cent, for dry.” Never before probably Ims this question been considered froin the point of view of quality of eggs ; always it has been a question of number. But these are days when quality is being more than ever considered and especially where efforts are being made to develop an export trade, hence tlie desire to get more of the best. However, the foregoing is just one more proof of the growing demand to cut the wet mash right out; and with such evidence as the above there is reason to think that more and more poultry keepers will resort to the dry mash method. Your pullets will now be beginning to lay; some already have begun. Are you thinking of testing at all? Testing is the sure means of knowing the worth of a bird. The dairyman tests his cow; why then should the poultryman who is in the business for profit, not do likewise. When it comes to breeding time, culling time, or any other time—you know the value of your birds when there are records to refer to.