POULTRY NOTES

Northern Advocate, 12 June 1926, Page 9

POULTRY NOTES

NUMBER OF EGGS.

(By E. J. TERRY.)

EARLY CHICKS

Practically all fanciers .and many commercial poultry-keepers endeavour to get a few very early clutches of chicks. It is a fact that those early birds invariably develop good frames and possess a sound constitution. The reason is not far to seek. The hens have not boon laying for any length of time, therefore they can give full quantity of the various constituents required for the formation of the chicks. In most cases these early clutches are hatched under hens.

Don’t follow the old-fashioned idea that a hen must sit on 13 eggs. Ju»t think it out for a moment. We may liken the hen to a stove. She supplies the heat, as the lamp does so the incubator. Now the larger the number of eggs and the larger the incubator the higher you turn up the flame. Therefore is it not somewhat silly to give a. small hen, weighing, perhaps, only three and a half pounds 11 or 13 eggs at this time of the year, when the nights may have been very cold? As the eggs arc turned by the hen, each in turn may bo chilled, and disappointment follow at hatching time; whereas the same hen, if given nine eggs, might have hatched the* IbtOn the other, 15 or 17 eggs are not too many for a large hen, especially if the nest is not in an exposed position. Don’t be deceived as to the number of eggs that you may give to a hen by the fact that she cover them with her feathers; instinct teaches her to do this.

When shifting the hen lift her carefully from the nest, carry her under your arm in the orthodox manner, and lightly enclose the head in your hand so that she cannot see ■where she is being taken. Do not remove the hand until the bird is in frmit of the nest, and the first thing she sees is the nest of eggs. If you are not a stranger to her and you have handled her quietly, she -will probably walk straight on to the nest. If she does not seem inclined to settle down at puce you may often bring this about by slipping your hand under the hen, over the eggs, and moving your fingers gently on the bare skin of the bird, each side of the breast bone; in fact, you are tickling the hen. If she wriggles down 'on'' to your fingers, draw your hand away, and if she wriggles the eggs into place in nearly all cases she is a certain sitter. It is advisable if you are getting valuable eggs to fill the nest with common ones, and when the hen has settled down, for a couple of days take away the ordinary aggs and replace them with those you wish incubated. One feed a day is sufficient for a sitting hen; but see that she comes off every day to feed and drink, otherwise the nest may be soiled. Sitting hens should have soft food. Feed good maize or wheat She should have access to grit, water, and occassionally a very little green feed. If the hen is to stay with the chicks, never feed her albumen meal, as she may come on to lay and desert the chicks while they still require brooding. Where it is the intention j to rear a fair number of chicks, endeavour, if possible, to set (say) four hens on the same day. On the fifth or sixth day you can then test the eggs for fertility, and the probability is that three hens will take the number of fertile eggs that remain in the four nests. Thus you save one hen; or she, with three others, can again be given eggs and the test applied as before. This may seem a small economy, but it is the adding together -of the small economics that makes far the success of the poultry breeder. When the chicks are hatched you can, in some cases, again practise economy by dividing four clutches amongst three hens, and in some eases two hens will take the lot; but please remember that it is not economy if the chicks suffer. Again, think of the hen as a stove. A six-pound hen can keep warmed a larger number comfortably brooded in a sheltered situation than she could in an exposed one. In some eases the garden and the growing of chicks da clash, but chicks up to about five weeks old can seldom do any harm to a garden, t In fact, in many cases they ] do a vast amount of good by eating ! pests, etc. Where it is not advisable I for the hen to be at large owing to her scratching, she can be confined in a coop or box, which has a slatted front through which the chicks can go back and forth, and through which the hen can put her head to get at the vessel containing drinking water

or food. It is preferable to have a box without a bottom and to shift it each day or every other day a short distance. 1 As showing the value that some gardeners place on small chicks, I hud a friend in Australia, a noted rosegrower, who kept bantams for the special purpose of the chicks keeping, down green fly and other pests. The mother hen was, of course, confined in a coop. The coops were distributed by the side, of the beds containing! cuttings and young rose trees. The bantam chicks for the first few weeks of their lives had a free range amongst the plants. For the first 48 hours after the first chick is hatched do not put down any chick food. It is probable that the hen will not leave the nest until the chicks have been hatched for 24 hours. If she has not done so by this time, remove her and the chicks and destroy the! nest. Give her a feed of whole grain, and if possible procure some j coarse sand or line grit, or clean road | sweepings will do if nothing else is I procurable. Sec that the birds havcj access to clean water. When they! arc 48 hours old their first food may consist of rolled oats or coarse patmeal or bread dipped in milk (and you don’t require muck milk), squeezed dry and mixed with either rolled oats or oatmeal, or you may mash or mince a hard-boiled egg and mix with oatmeal or rolled oats. There arc now a fair number of good-elass chick foods which may be fed after the first few days. Some feed tlnso entirely. It is certainly labouipsaving, but personally I prefer to feed what might be termed mash or damp) food at least once a] day. ' The birds enjoy the change. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that soft, mashy foods are more easily digested than the dry harder foods —it is the reverse. The bulk of the constituents of grain consist of starch. The starch is not in a loose powder, but is contained in cells or sheaths somewhat resembling the mussel scale that you sometimes see on fruit trees (that is what it looks like under the microscope). These scales are somewhat difficult to digest, unless they have been brought in contact with saliva. Now it can be easily understood that if damp food is fed to a chick it will not absorb as much saliva when it is in the crop as it would do if it were, dry. Further, by feeding small broken grain you give the gizzard of the chick some work to do, and so it develops a hard muscular gizzard, or stomach, which has great grinding power, and being in a healthy state secretes healthy, digestive fluids —a very different organ from that of the bird which is fed on soft foods. When one cuts open -,a fowl it is a very easy matter to tell how it has been fed for the last few months. In addition to good, sound chick food, a large proportion of which should consist of oat kernels in some form, either sweet or sour curd, sour being best; but if you are feeding sour, stick to it. Don’t feed sweet curd one day and sour another. Failing the curd, give three per cent of ■ albumen meal after a fortnight old [ and live per cent when they are six '• weeks, and next year you wont have pullets seven and eight months old before they lay.