POULTRY HINTS.

Northland Age, Volume 3, Issue 20, 18 December 1906, Page 2

POULTRY HINTS.

Never raise more chickens than you can take care of well). Sand is not grit, and it does no good to mix with feed. Change the poultry from the old yard, fouled by droppings, to a piece of fresh grass land. Keep the water vessel scrupulously clean, and keep it in a shady placefowls like cold water. The best layers are early risers and early morning layers, and of an active disposition. Don’t feed to much soft food. The gizzard must have work. Once a day or five times a week, is plenty. Sunshine, plenty of it, let into the house to keep things dry, will do a great deal towards preventing roup. Don't forget that unfertile eggs keep much longer fresh than eggs laid by hens runnin| with a cock. : Don’t forget that cocks as well as hens eat a lot of food, and no cock is necessary except during the hatching season. The close-feathered, medium-sized hens of the Leghorn type are nonsitters, good foragers and great layers.

The man who handles poultry on the farm will find more money in it than he supposes. The hens bring in cash every day, while in other branches of farm work you have to wait six months or a year before realizing anything. A good diet for ducklings a week old to the marketable age is mash composed of two-parts maizemeal, and one each of bran and pollard, mixed with liver soup or some other form of animal food. They should also have plenty of green food and grit chickens may be fed on this mash, adding when a month old, boiled oats or wheat at midday, and dry cracked grain at night. . Do not depend upon mongrel bred, chance-mated stock from which to grow pullets for next laying hens. Select the best laying hens on your place and use only their eggs for hatching. Good laying pullets cannot be grown from eggs laid by poor laying hens. Like produces like, good laying pullets comes from good egg-producing hens. Feeding too often is a serious mistake. If the hens are in good condition for laying they will thrive much better if compelled to oome off the roost in the morning and scratch for their breakfast than if they walk up to a feed trough and fill their crops. Use troughs or fountains that can be easily cleaned. Some troughs become slimy, though the water appears clear. To clean such troughs, use a broom and soapsuds, rinsing with clear water. If this is done once a week, and the troughs filled with fresh water every morning, the hens will be amply, supplied with all the fresh water needed. For ducks, the trough should have slats of lath across the top, to prevent them from filthy water. When feeding grain of any kind to a flSkk it should be scattered over quite a space, so as to insure opportunity for all the fowls to get a suitable portion. Fowls are like human beings in many respects ; some are hoggish, others ill natured, some domineering and some exceedingly meddlesome. When the allotment of food is spread out in a small space some of the fowls exercise all their undesirable traits to the annoyance of others. When the food is property distributed these busy bodies have to attend to their eating or lose their chance by running around, and they soon recognise the situation, so that the result is the whole flock can eat their rations in comparative quiet. .

In poultry keeping, as in every other business, it is absolutely necessary to start right. Let your yards be right, clean, well drained and sufficiently large. Let your houses be right, sweet, friry and well ventilated. Let your feeding be right ; neither too much nor too short, and well balanced as to ingredients. Above all, let your birds be right. Do not run away with the idea that all pure-bred fowls are .perfect. A good laying mongrel is infinitely superior to a poor laying thoroughbred. Select your breeders from yards famous for producing eggs rather than feathers. A good, weighty body is worth more than a strictly exact comb. Green feed is essential to the successful raising of poultry. Where there is a deficiency it should be supplied. Rape, barley, lucerne, cabbage or lettuce are excellent for this, purpose. A good supply for the poultry can be kept up in this way. There are two systems by which these are supplied, that is, either cut them up with a chaff-cutter or l>y some other means, and give round to the fowls at midday for preference, or mix up in the morning mash. The other system is to grow these crops in close proximity to the yards and let the fowls run out on to tfyem for a couple of hours each day/ in turns. After the crops have g/t a sufficient start to admit of thy bfcing done, both these systems a]fe followed according to convenience on the Grantham Stud Poultry Farm. Dubbing Fowls.—Obtain w sharp pair of scissors (slightly/ curved scissors are best), and get in assistant to hold the bird, t/ie latter holding the bird firmly against the body with one hand and/the comb in the other. The operator should now take hold of the loose skin of the ear-lobe, insert the joint of his scissors, and dissect th/ outer portion, leaving no loose/skin behind. Having done this on both sides, the wattles should next repive attention. Take each one singly/ and cut close to the face-skin dey not, however, cut into the latter,/nor the skinthroat ; and, lastly/ take the comb off. This is best nfcrformed by commencing at the bajfe and cutting towards the beak, /press the scissors firmly down on /the head, following the curve of the Aead, and removing the comb’ as clo» as possible to the head. If this it done correctly, but little else will /be necessary, except perhaps to give a couple of snips each side of the front, ,to remove any slight excrescence that may still remain. It is L good plan to hold the bird’s head/ under a tap of cold water for a/iew> seconds, and, with a dry cloth, *ipe it a little, and in the evening apply a little vaseline. This latter wifi enable the 9oabf that form to/ fall off much sooner than would hive been the case if nothing bad Imm applied to it.