POULTRY YARD

Otago Witness, Issue 1816, 10 September 1886, Page 8

POULTRY YARD

Cooked Food for Poultry. That cooked food in all respects is better for poultry than uncooked, few who have tried both will dispute. It has been proven that cooked food is more easily assimilated and more nutriment is derived from it than the same amount of food in its natural or uncooked state. Every poultry-keeper on a large scale should, therefore, have a kettle or steamer in which to cook vegetables, meat, &c. for his fowls. Raw, green food is sometimes to be fed, given occasionally by way of variety, but the steady diet should be cooked food and grain, which is on some accounts better if fed raw, though parched corn and wheat are excellent for laying fowls. Meat should not be fed raw in largo qnantities, cooked it may be given liberally with good effects. The table waste is often thrown to the hens with raw peelings which are wasted, whereas, if all were well boiled it would mix r.iadily with the meal and bran, which should also be scalded, and thus used to the best advantage. It is in saving such little items that the careful poultry-keeper reduces the feed bill to the lowest point, and has thriftier fowls than his wasteful neighbours, whose system of feeding is to buy a bag of corn and let the birds eat away on it whenever they choose to do so. — Northwestern Farmer. The Characteristics of Fowls. The following are the breeds that do not sit. They lay eggs entirely whifce in colour : — The Houdans, Leghorns, Black Spanish, Hamburgs, Polish, Minoreas, and Andalusians. The best table fowls, for quality of flebh, without regard to market appearance, are the Games, Houdans, Langshans, Dorkings, Wyandottes, Plymouth Rocks, and Brahmas. The most persistent sitters are the Cochins, Brahmas, Wyandottes, and Dominicks. 'I he fowls that can be most easily confined are the Brahmas, Cochins, Wyandottes, Plymouth Rocks, and Dorkings. The fowls that require high fences in order to closely confine them are the Hamburgs, the Leghorns, Black Spanish, Andalusians, Games, and Houdans. The above is intended to classify euch breed in proper order, though it is not given as entirely correct. — Farm, Field, and Stockman. Miscellaneous. Buying expensive eggs, says a correspondent of the Rural New Yorker, is " buying a pig in a bag." He would buy improved chicks in the fall, keep them separate from the other iowls, and when the stock from them is numerous enough, kill and sell the old birds. He prefers Plymouth Rocks for these reasons :—": — " They lay mostly when eggs are scarce and valuable, and the eggs are of a favourite brown colour ; they are excellent mothers ; they are very hardy, both when chicks and mature ; they mature very early ; they are choice table fowls, beautifully coloured meat being extensively produced on the breast, where it is of most value ; and they have bare legs." A saturated solution of boracic acid should always be on hand for use in the poultry yard. For swelled head and eyes, applied with a soft sponge, it is one of the best remedies known. A teaspoonful poured down the throat twice a day is an excellent remedy for croup, while a mixture of equal parts of the powdered boracic acid borax, a teaspoonful once a day, has been successful in cases of cholera. It is very seldom that you can accomplish anything by trying to help chickens out of the shell. It is impossible to remove the substance which lines the shell without causing trouble unless you are extremely slow and careful. Let the chickens cut and kick their own way out. Of course there are some extreme cases that are exceptions to this rule. In referring to turkeys M. Barral remarks that after having been given the run of a good pasture it is necessary to have recourse to very nourishing and stimulating foods, and a mixture is recommended composed of bread crumbs, boiled eggs, onions, nettles, a thousand-leaved grass (evidently yarrow), and drained curd. I have frequently advised the use of curd as a valuable food for chickens. If made from new milk it contains a large percentage of fat — really butter — the principal ingredient being a nitrogenous and albuminous substance, which is the chief element in cheese. If, however, it is made from skim milk, almost the whole of the fat contained in curd made from new milk is absent, so that skimmed milk curd, which is one of the cheapest foods that can be given where milk is produced, if} of especial value for chickens, and, indeed, for fowls, as it is highly nutritious, easily digested, and stimulating. Ducks, as everybody knows, are naturally fond of water, in which they find no small amount of their food; but in fattening it is essential to specially feed them by hand upon

a diet consisting of mixed grains and animal food.

In France, where geese are very largely bred, the birds derive the principal proportion of their food from the fields and pastures, to which they are driven in flocks like sheep. T u ey should also bo supplied with a mixture of barley and buekwheatmeal. When put up to fatten oats and curds should be given, followed by barleymeal, buekwheatmeal, maizemeal, and peameal, linseed, with herbs of a stimulating and aromatic nature. After this they may be hand-fed or crammed with boluses of meal. It may be observed that buekwheatmeal is specially adapted for fattening poultry, containing, as it does, a large percentage of oil, which is obtained through its means at a much cheaper rate than fatty food of almost any other description. It is quite certain that the subject of feeding poultry to ascertain the actual cost of keeping the birds has not been fully understood, nor has any attempt been made to estimate it upon a practical basis. If we were made fully aware of the quantity of food which poultry consume in the course of a year we should, perhaps, bo more willing to take greater trouble with them, although some persons who believe that they are making a large profit would undoubtedly be greatly deceived, for there can be no question that, especially upon a farm where food is at hand without purchasing, they cousume very considerable quantities— of ten more than is returned by the sale of their eggs. These same minute details however, also show how important is the manure which is produced, and that if an attempt is to be made to 'arrive at an accurate profit and loss account, it should not only be carefully collected and saved, but its intrinsic value actually determiued.