POULTRY NOTES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXVII, Issue 11535, 21 November 1900, Page 3

POULTRY NOTES.

We have learned at our house that a little fine-cut tobacco placed in a hen's nest will relieve the sitter of lice.

Give the little chicks from the incubator something to scratch in and plenty of fresh air every pleasant day. Don't be afraid of fresh air. "■':-.■'.■■ *-'

Profitable Ducks:. D. B. Dickenson, of New Jersey, has a flock of six Rouen ducks, which laid 570 eggs from March to July, 1899. '.. During that time one of the ducks hatched out a sitting of 11 eggs. The ducks weigh from 51b to Blb each. Twolvo eggs were equal in weight to 19 ordinary hens' eggs.»' Mr. Dickenson prefers this breed to anv other. The peanut for poultry is one of the best foods that I have ever used. It far excels corn, wheat, or oats for laying hens, as well as for growing chicks. Hens or chicks do not get so fat on them as they will on grain. Peanuts are the best' feed to throw in the scratching shed, tops and all. Hens can be kept busy all day with them. Eggs for Hatching: First put iin of oat hulls or wheat bran in the bottom of the box, then put in a sheet of thin paper, place the eggs, wrapped in cotton, or soft paper, a little distance apart, and sprinkle bran into tho spaces, filling up with bran. Shake down well, and place a piece of pasteboard next the cover. The cover should slide in a groove, and be fastened with screws, not nails. E. D. Wostwcr advises turkeys being penned until they are fully feathered. My experience is that half of them would be dead before that time arrived. I would suggest that two Ift boards bo used 6ft long, and placed V - shaped in front of the coop. As soon as the young turkeys are able to fly over the board they will be old enough to follow the hen. They should be housed until the dew is off' in the morning, and housed every night until three months old, after which they will be able to take care of themselves.

Feeding Brooder Chicks: At first, writes Mrs. Bennett, I givo boiled rieo or other cooked soft food with chopped vegetables. After they are one week old I begin feeding cracked corn and wheat millet, coarse oatmeal, or other small, hard grain once a day, being careful to provide plenty of coarse sand or grit and to keep plenty of fresh water near them, so arranged that they may drink without wetting their bodies. After they are three weeks of age, I feed entirely on any small hard grain they can eat, and allow them free range. To bo successful with brooder chicks, the brooders and runs must be kept perfectly clean and freo from foul air and dampness, and not more than 50 kept together. Scaly leg is caused by a parasite which lives and broods under tho scales; the best remedy is to thoroughly wash the legs in warm soapsuds, and if a small pinch of bicarbonate of soda is added to the soapsuds, so much the better. Wipe tho logs dry, and apply an. ointment made of one part of sulphur and four parts of vaseline. Repeat two or three times, two or three days apart, and a cur© should bo effected. Thus an American poultry journal says:—Prevention is, of course, cleanliness. A correspondent tells us he keept his houses absolutely clean, and paints the perches with crude kerosene once a month,; that ought to prevent scaly leg, and the question would arise, how the disease got a foothold under these conditions as he describes.' Either his work is not thoroughly well done, or he has introduced the disease by buying birds afflicted with it; if not the latter, we would mistrust the sifted wood ashes, and would suggest his using dry loam for the dust baths and on tho roost platforms insteadi