FACTS ABOUT FOWLS.

Northern Advocate, 30 June 1888, Page 3

FACTS ABOUT FOWLS.

I wish to call attention to the value of milk— sweet, sour, thick or thin — for poultry. Egg production I think is decidedly the most payingresult to be obtained from hena, though many birds will need to be raised to sell to replenish layers too old to keep. In January, '85 my fowls had only half enough milk, and I -sold from them forty-five dozen eR°-s En Jananaiy, «86, we sold almost none - and now middle of February, they are fallen below tbeir accustomed work. I can attribute this difference to nothing else but lack of milk. The loss, at thS time when eggs are the highest price, ' is considerable, and I do .not intend* that ray fowls shall ever again be without plenty of milk. Now and then a fowl will die. Ifc may be disease or a hurt for some animal I heard peeple say that the sharp particles of banes killed them, and as this looked reasonable I stopped feeding bones. But the number of eggs lessened, and I recommenced the bone-feeding, with evident improvement. Possibly a sharpe piece of bone may occasionally kill a fowl; but so it sometimes does a man. Shall wethereforestop eating meet and fish? A mill is advertised for grinding bones for fowls but Ido not know about it. I am well satisfied to pound them with the head of a light axe, on a very solid stone high enough for convenience. I lose a fowl now and then, and do not see how it can be avoided altogether, but ijhe bfest care will bring the losses down to a lnmimum, and without this there cannot be much profit anywhere —it is the little, apparently nnimportant, everyday neglect that eventually eats into the farmer's purse. A fowl's gizzerd must be one of the most marvellous struc.turcvfor what do- they not put therein. Do not put bones in the fire, for this desfcorys the best part— grease, gristle, marrow, etc. The hens manage the sharp hard, angular, flinty particles somehow. How they come at the well-known sound of the pounding— running, flying, cackling, juisfc as a hungry flock (mine are rarely hungry for feed) do for corn. Brother farmers do not forget that millions of eggs are every year imported from France and other countries, and wake up to this easiest, most profitable and most interesting branch of farming. How many farmers keep a drowsy, dejected, forlorn-looking unprofiable lot of hens? Neighbours and visitors frequently make remarks about my handsome brood. Nothing at all but plenty of any kind of feed, shells, bones, milk, ashes or dust, and all the ranging room they choose. Under these conditions they scarcely damage anything. A ploughed field — repeated ploughed — is for them a most delightful resort; they fairly chuckle over the luscious morsels that abound everywhere in the freshly turned earth. — [S. M. Palmer.