POULTRY.

New Zealand Mail, 30 December 1892, Page 7

POULTRY.

SEASONABLE NOTES.

(by: iiinwife in the capbicobstian.) Very little can be done in the poultryyard this month. Unless it is actually necessary to hatch, prize, or rear eggs I would not advise it. If hatching has to be done, then the eggs should be well damped when the hen is off each dsy. It is not impossible to bring out and rear fine healthy chickens this month, but it is certainly a great deal of trouble, and entails much discomfort from vermin. Many correspondents ask me about broody hens, aud how to put them off the cluck. The only tfiing to be done is to shut them up in a coop, or wire pen, and feed gener msly. It is a mistake to starve a hen because she wants to sit; as in the first instance you reduce her strength by so doing, and may destroy her constitution and laying powers for months. A little glauber salts in the drinking water is sometimes benficial. All pens where fowls are kept, houses and roosting places must be well watched for vermin this month, and constantly sprayed with carbolic. December, January, and part of February are the worst mouths for vermin and the little red mifcss that infest the roosts, so look out for them. Eggs will be getting scarce now about the beginning of the New Tear, and those who have plenty will do well to preserve them in lime water. I read lately a statement that eggs can be kept for a length of time just oiled and packed in salt. Those hints must have been taken from English papers or those published in a very much cooler climate than this of ours, aud as they are apt to mislead, I beg to state that I have tried keeping eggs in all those ways and many others, in fact, I have lost dozens upon dozens of eggs in testing recipes published in newspapers. Oiled eggs will keep in cold climates for about a month, oven then unless turned daily the yolks adhere to the shelle. In Maryborough I once packed five dozen oiled eggs in salt, and two months later when I began to use them I found °0 per cent of them too mußty for use. The only really reliable recipe is the plain lime water : but in all modes of preserving eggs they must be put ia frouh from the nest.

There is a sort of summer sickness or slight apoplexy that affects fowls during this month and next. They appear dixzy and weak, sometimes fall on to-their heads. If taken at once the best plan is to pull out the feathers round the oil bag. Why this should give relief, I cannot explain, but it does. And as a rule the oil bag will be found very swollen and full of o'l, then hold, the bird's head under the tap. In case some of my readers do not know where the oil bag ia, I may explain that it is almost on the tip of the tail, or what is familiarly called in a dressed fowl, the * parson's nose.' It is like a little spike, and exudes the oil with which the fowls annoint their feathers. Before rain you will always see the fowls oiling their feathers, and a setting hen oils her breast and underneath feathers whenever she comes off her nest, as by this means her eggs get the oil which closes the pores of the shell.

This is the best month to throw Epsom salts about the run to sweeten it, and if your fowls have been long on it a load of grit will very likely improve their health in the near future. See that there is a good ash bath somewhere about the yard; if not, make one of equal parts of ashes and sand and a little lime or old mortar if possible. This bath should de renewed every four or five weeks during the summer months, as it becomes filled with vermin. A quarter of a pound of sulphur is a good addition to it, if the fowls have vermin badly. When whitewashing the fowl-house if sulphate of iron is mixed with the lime in the proportion of lib to every three gallons of lime wash, and if it is put on hot, and every crack and crevice filled with it, the vermin, however bad, will disappear.

I have been asked to give what I consider the best age for breeding hens. Two-year-old hens are the best, no doubt, as at that age a hen is just in her prime. But if you have a number of fine, well grown pullets, and can mate them with a vigorous two-year-old rooster, you can safely set all their eggs, that is, after the first three <r lour. A pullet's first

three or four eggs generally produce weakling chicks. It ii always best to hare the one sex older than the other. My best results have been from two-year-old hens mated with a three-year-old rooster. But it may not be the case with all varieties, it is only through repeated experiments that one finds out these things. • The best laying hens are those of one year old ; consequently, to have eggs at all times and season?, ore requires to hatch a certain number of chicks regularly every month, so that they will always be coming on month by month.

Many people have aeked me for some rule determining the sex of eggs I cannot give any rule and I do not believe any poultry fancier can give one that is, or has, proved reliable. I have tried all that I have read or heard of, but not one has proved quite satisfactory. The shape of the egg some say, others the position of the air bladder. These two have been proved unreliable by me. It is Lewis Wright, I think, who says—that by mating a very small number of hens with the one rooster, cockerels will predominate as a result. This, I believe, is the rule, for I have noticed in all my pens where I had only two and three hens with one male bird, the result was a very large proportion of cockerel*, and in those large pens where X was able to allow six or eight hens to the one male bird, the pullets predominated. Though I had noticed the difference I wondered I had never associated it with having a lesser or greater number of heuß in the pens, until I saw the rule stated, so that I would like to see it tested again before giving it as a hard and fast rule to go by.