THE POULTRY YARD.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 753, 6 August 1886, Page 15

THE POULTRY YARD.

THE SUNFLOWER FOR POULTRY. This stately, if somewhat coarse-lcoking plant, has some claims on the attention of those who keep poultry, aside of its use for ornament, in the value of the seed for feediog. The quick growth of the plants, and the ample shade they soon afford if planted where fowls assemble, is also an argument in their favor. An enthusiastic grower of the plant in connection with poultry keeping, thus speaks of it in the Poultry Journal : As a shade for fowls and growing chicks the plants are unequalled ; the birds preferring them to corn-field, shrubbery or artifical shades of any kind. Again a given quantity of ground will produce more bushels of sunflower seed than of corn and it is certainly superior as poultry food. I plant it in rows three to three and a half feet apart and twelve to eighteen inches in the rows. I cultivate with a horse when I find the hoe is too tedious. Such a dislancs between the rows affords excellent space for the coops of hens with their broods. The plants make excellent shade, and the occasional cultivation gives the chicks fresh earth to enjoy themselves in. When the

seeds are sufficiently ripened for food I ben the stalks of the smaller heads over, so th< flowers will hang about twelve inches fron the ground. This allows the cbicks and fowls to do their own harvesting of these ; but leaves the larger ones to ripen fully, when they may be gathered and threshed with a flail, run through the fanning mill andTcept for future use. No other food will at all compare with them to produce eggs or to give a j fine glossy plumage. . . j