NOTES FOR BREEDERS.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1747, 30 August 1905, Page 60

NOTES FOR BREEDERS.

Beware of damp quarters, and have regular feeding hours. Soit out the poor from the good, and feed plenty of meat during the moulting period. A hen appreciates a variety of food, and will repay you for the same. Scanty feeding is not adapted to abundant egg production. It is much easier to prevent disease than it is to cure it. Cracked oyster shells are a necessary thing to have for your fowls. Ib is strange how much some people expect from their fowls, and how little they do for them. •Clover hay out in half-inch lengths cooked and mixed with bran makes a goed morning feed. Clover not only promotes digestion but also largely assists in supplying the elements necessary for egg production, and lowers the cost of feed. Poultry that is to be sold on the market should be fat when sold. They are much better flavoured, sell more readily, and are just what the buyers want. If the hen is a scratching animal, let her scratch. Feeding elover is a preventive of soft-shelled eggs. The morning mash in winter should be warm, but not piping hot as one writer puts it. It should also be given in a crumbly state, never sloppy. A good plan te feed, clover hay is to cook it about an hour before feeding. If this is not easily done, it can be scalded at night and allowed to steam until morning. Of course, the

vessel must be covered so as to retain the steam.

Don’t feed bad or spoiled food because it is cheaper. It is false economy. It will propagate disease. Love for the living fowl tends to enhance the value of poultry. A true fancier is one who is devoted to the work of developing the beauty, and increasing the vitality of his fowls. If you are raising thoroughbred poultry do not sell your culls for cheap breeder®, as people will point them out as your stock, never mentioning the price paid, and in such - cases your stock will be condemned unjustly. The dust bath is a necessity among poultry. It is as important as the wash basin in the human family. The dust bath is a natural method of keeping the feathers and skin clean, and keeping down vermin. Remove the droppings from the floors of the hen houses at least once a -week during the spring and summer months, cover an inch deep with road dust or sawdust, scatter slacked lime liberally under the perches and in the nests. If you have any choice breeding stock mate them and keep the eggs for hatching. An occasional feed of cracked com may be given after they are three weeks old, but their principal diet until they are six weeks of age should be oatmeal slightly wet with hot water or sweet milk, riiSef broken bread, meat, cooked or raw, chopped very fine. Never give cooked potatoes to the young stock. Every night remember to empty all the water vessels,

and fill them again the next morning with fresh water. We hear many complaints of poultry dying off by the score. The cause will be found in dirty, ill-ventilated quarters and impure water. Sometimes a fowl which has hitherto appeared perfectly well is observed to stagger about, holding its head either to one side, or tilted back a good deal. It has got a brain seizure, and if not quickly treated will soon die. Very frequently, indeed, it does perish, despite any treatment. Such troubles are generally caused by gross overfeeding. The treatment is to remove the affected bird to a rather dark place of moderate temperature, and feed very sparingly on bread and milk. First of all give a good purge of Epsom salts, and follow twice a day with a powder composed of three grains antipyrin and two grains salicylate, of soda; mix with a little moistened flour, and put over the bird’s throat. A few drops of acid, hydrobroin, dal., put into the drinking water (keep in an earthernware vessel) now and then, as the bird is recovering (just as much as will slightly acidulate it) will help to bring her round. Keep away, from all male birds, or other feathered stock until recovered. A common barndoor fowl is not worth such treatment, but many a fancier would be glad to save a good specimen of a pure breed, if possible. A good measurement for feeding whole grain is a quart for twelve hens. The rich fresh eggs gathered from your own yard where good wholesome grain is fed are far superior to the cased eggs that have been, in storage several months. Many are of opinion that it is impossible to keep fowls in confinement, but it is safe to say that three-fourths of higjh-bred poultry are confined in small yards, and many of the best birds at our large shows are picked up in small backyards. A good way of disposing of skim-milk with profit is to feed it to the poultry. As a feed for poultry it furnishes the material for making growth in a palatable, easily digested form. For this reason it is easily valuable as an addition to the grain ration which is liable, to lack in the materials to make growth. —“Stock-keeper.”