POULTRY NOTES

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVIII, Issue 74, 24 February 1938, Page 16

POULTRY NOTES

(By “Brooder.”) Nothing can be gained by urging pullets to profit before they are fully matured. To get pullets laying before a well-developed body has been built up means that full growth will never be attained, and such birds will be stinted throughout their lives. More than that, it is probable that the birds will crack up before they /have done the full distance of a season of regular laying. Much better, therefore is it to allow the youngsters to pursue a normal period of “just growing” than to force them to lay before they are ready. Eggs are rising in price, and the temptation is great, we know, but it is better to hold off at least until the age of six months has been reached. This season has been one of the best for pullet rearing, and most young stock are more forward than usual. They will lay in due course. Keep off the forcing meat rations until the indications unmistakably show that they should be laying. When that stage is reached, then and then only should the laying mash proper be fed. Remember this, a pullet starting to lay too early will prove an indifferent layer, whilst one fully matured will give of its best with a regularity and consistency every poultry-keeper loves to see. An Australian writer states that New South Wales is probably one of the few counties in the world content to use the low amount of 5 or 6 per cent, meat meal in the ration. In England, America and Now Zealand, where continued tests have been made, a ration containing at least 10 per cent, meat meal is used, and with other high protein ingredients the mash is much higher in fleshforming elements. This may or may not be true in a general sense, but there are not a few who feed meat meals as they feel tlieir birds need it. They, too, like the Australians referred to, like to have a little margin so that when the birds slacken < off, as they do in the autumn, they have still an amount of meat meal within the limit with which to urge on the birds to continue laying, and so it can he reconi mended that where there are still prospects of more eggs from any number of birds, perhaps a little extra encouragement will help without harm to the birds. Such action should, however, be limited to the 10 per cent, proportion, otherwise harm will result.

These are hot days, when eggs should be collected at intervals during the day with a tendency to more collections in the morning, when, most eggs are laid. It is very harmful to the contents of eggs when they are left in the nest all day. Were only one egg laid in each nest the damage would not be so great. Consider, however, the nest with only ten eggs in it. If we allow a minimum period of ten minutes for each egg from the time when the bird enters the nest to leaving it, it dbes not need much calculation to discover how long some of these eggs have been covered by the warm bodies of the hens which have had possession of the nests. The temperature of birds is unusually high at present. The effect on the eggs can he imagined. To say the least, the shells being porous, .the condition of the interior must he affected. Gather your eggs, no matter how few, often each day-