POULTRY NOTES.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XLI, Issue 21, 27 January 1906, Page 1

POULTRY NOTES.

FATTENING METHODS. Reference has been ma de recently to various systems of crate fattening as a means of turning out the very best table birds the most recent being that described by Mr Terry, the Tasmanian expert. In "Feathered Life" the Sussex system has been described by "A Practical Fattener," in which special reference is made to the French pellet method of cramming. This article favours the usual fattening period of three weeks, and points out that the cramming should be resorted to at the end of the first fortnight. The results from the machine and hand systems of cramming are, it is remarked, about the same. The method is as follows: — "The food when cramming by pellets, should be rolled up into boluses of balls, about a couple of inches long, and half- an inch thick: One of these is placed at the mouth of the bird, pushed down with tha first finger, then taken hold of on the outside and run down into the crop. It takes from a dozen to eighteen pellets to cram an ordinary chicken. The birds thrive and fatten well under such a system, "Che only drawback to it being tho time it occupies. With the medicine, an cxEerienced fattener can easily cram 360 irds an hour, so that the difference between the two methods will at once be realised." The article goes on to say that "ground oats is pre-eminently the best j food with which to feed fattening birds, < and no other meal produces flesh of j quite the same flavour and quality." Ground oats is not readily obtained here ' and fine white pollard is the next best j thing. Maize meal is generally condemn ed in England, but still about 20 per cent ! of finely ground maize meal is recommended by many authorities. "Practi- , cal Fattener" says that "hard grain • should never be supplied to fatteni-i^ ' birds, as it takes longer to digest, and the chickens do not derive the same benefit as from meals. Commencing with the beginning of the second, week, a little fat should be added to the food in order to soften the flesh and improve the quality. The exact quantity depends, to some extent, upon .the meals used.; but roughly speaking, about £oz a bird a day is ample. The quantity should be gradually increased, till towards the end of three weeks each bird is receiving an ounce a day. "The food should be mixed with- sour skim milk into the required consistency, ' varying with the system adopted. For feeding from the trough it should ro scmble very thick cream ; for pellet-feed-ing it must be made into a stiff paste. • Sour skim-milk gives better results than sweet, as it is found that the acid has ; the effect of preventing sickness. The - food should always bo mixed about 12 . hours before it is wanted for use, in or- • der to allow a certain amount of fermentation to take place. The birds, under I whatever system of fattening, should be fed twice a day, dividing the day as ' nearly as possible into two equal parts." HOW TO GET EGGS. If it cost in actual money one dollar ; a year to keep a hen and the hen lays ' 200 eggs, there iB a net profit of 100 per cent, even though the average price of eggs is only 12 cents a dozen." < As no other farm stock will pay this average profit, this subject is one that should be studied. On this subject a ?oultryman gives the following general ' acts : — I Tho pullet that begins laying at the earliest age and continues, to lay the longest is the ideal mother for a strain of layers. j But there is something beyond this for a laying strain must be started ahead of the eggs from which its members aro hatched. The hens must be in the best possible condition before the eggs are laid. The eggs they Jay will hatch out strong, vigorous chicks, and these should be forced to the limit. Vigorous constitution means a capacity to produce a large number of eggs. Good feed and care induce continued vigour. The artificial stimulus grows into a characteristic that becomes fixed and descends to the progeny generation after generation, and in the end a laying strain is established and the value of such a strain is undisputed. Anyone who breeds poultry may do something toward increasing J the general average by attending to tho | details of care and feeding. Upon pro- • ductiveness depends the profit that may be made from commercial poultry to a large extent. Theso are not idle theories ; they are facts that have been established by years of experience and observation. Tho study of thorn is a material factor in making improvements in our flocks, j To this we add that eggs being most profitable in winter, every effort should be made for winter eggs. j — "Baltimore Sun." ' FEEDING OATS TO POULTRY. I am a firm believer in oats as the best grain for poultry either in putting frame i on your stock, size on the growing stock, ■ or in getting the eggs from the layers, ' and I feed three-fourths of my grain ration right along and have for a number of years, and have never yet seen the least particle of trouble from their use. In fact 1 find I can keep a flock of fowls in better condition under any and all circumstances when feeding mostly oats, than I can by using any . other grain, but one thing must not be lost sight of in feeding oats and that is that the fowl has a large amount of waste material to get rid of in the hulls and 'she cannot do this right unless she is constantly supplied with sharp grit. The j idea that oats will wear a hole in a hen's crop is too ridiculous for anything, but I ran across a case to-day that beats that, and that was where a party had been feeding soft corn, which was frozen, to their fowls, and when they found the hens' crops had holes in them through which the grain fell out they decided that the frozen corn had frozen the crops and the skin had given way allowing the grain to fall out. But j this, in common with every similar casb I have come across, was caused by the hens eating unleached hard-wood ashes that turned into lye upon coming in contact with the liquids in the crop and naturally enough at the thin skin and membranes of the crop, which when filled with grain would easily burst, the lye having literally cooked the crop and outer skin where the pressure came tightest against it.— Correspondent of "Poultry Culture." Mr T. M. Horsfall writes from Cheltenham to the "Outlook" : — "Morocco is now the last piece of tho Mediterranean littoral not subject to a European Power. ' The Kaiser has had his imagination fired and his ambitions stimulated by the sight of our base at Gibraltar and the French base at Bizerta. The Germans argue, further, that, just a9 the English -hold 'Egypt and tho French hola Algiers, so it is only reasonable that Germany should obtain a protectorate over Morocco. It is not at all unlikely Chat in the course of tho next ten years Trios to may become a naval baso of the German Empire. On this argument we see tho immense value to the Germans of a naval base in Morocco, as a halfway station to Trieste and on the way both^to South Africa and Asia Minor, the possession of which countries is the day-dream of most Germans;' A further argument for the -view thus put forward lies in; tho projected loan to Morocco by a- syndicate headed by Messrs Mendelssohn arid Co., the wellknown bankers. . . Nothing would suit Germany bettor (the loan having been made) than the likely event vof the Sultan being unable to repay. We should then have the Venezuelan busi ; ness all over again, and the seizure of a Moroccan port (probably Mogador) as a pledge "to satisfy the just demands of Germany" i i