POULTRY NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 2010, 1 September 1892, Page 5

POULTRY NOTES.

USEFUL POULTRY. (Field.)

It is interesting ho know that the agitation in favour of the production .of useful, table poultry which was commenced in the Field some two years since has been gradually spreading. . Recently; Mr T. Bevington,' of Castle Hedingham, Essex, delivered a lecture afc Halstead, in which he recounted his experience -as a breeder both of fancy and useful purposes. He remarked that for some yearsho had- bred poultry for exhibition, but he maintained that it was impossible for farmers or cottagers to breed poultry of that kind and make inuchoufc of theni,' -because only a few persons "could take the prizes, and tho expenses *weVe very 'high.~ He had studied the subject, for some time, and gave the result of his experience. He said that although 131,000,000 of eggs were imported annually,, but a small quantity of them 'were used" for food, the others being employed in manufacturing purposes, and that the import price of tho latter was so low that ifc never would pay farmers or cottagers to produce them, but they might pay more attention to poultry, aud keep more of the sort which would, when well' bred, and fed for the table, pay thorn, the same ns they did the farmers of Sussex and Surrey. There was hardly a cottage iv those counties where people did not rear poultry for the table*. These fowls wero a breed of their own, and they fetched nearly double the price that was paid for fowls iv Essex, iv which" County they had not the right sort. '

Mr Bevington denounced the practice of feeding fowls on the same ground day after day, as the food was picked up tainted with filth and carrying the germs of disease. ' He maintained that fowls should have a large range, that they might supply themselves with the grubs and insects which did so much towards -producing the eggs. He instanced the value of crossbred Dorking and Indian game, stating that Mr Whillock turned down some large birds of tho latter breed in his yard, and got almost double the price for the birds he sent to London that he did previously. He advised clearing out old and inferior stock, and, for 'the table, to cross Dorking and Indian game, the dross being admirable layers ; but stock birds or eggs must not be got from birds kept in small runß. For egg-production, he regarded no birds as equal to the Minorca, but they were useless for the market as table fowls. Some very practical directions as to feeding and rearing followed, especially as to the use of canary seed for young chicks. In the discussion which followed, Mr Huline stated that sinco Mr, .Bevington had come into the district a distinct advance in the quality of the poultry of the neighbourhood had been made, owing to Mr Beviugton's distribution of eggs amongst the cottagers, -taking in repayment one chiok out of each clutch, a plan which may be followed with advantage by other landed proprietors who have the interests of their cottagers at heart.

Supposed Existence of<Fobeign Bodies in Boos. — Incredible as -you may. find 'your correspondent's statement of "his, finding an oat within an unbroken egg, such an. occurrence is by no meanß impossible. Some.few years ago, when residingt at Bagshofc, I had an almost precisely * similar experience, as within an unbroken turkey's egg I found a' small bean. The bird which laid the egg was always a most unhealthy-looking creature, . which, laid very irregularly, and whose eggs wore invariably deformed in shape and soft in shell-withoub. being actually soft eggs. There is no possible doubt of the bean being inside an absolutely unbroken egg.— C. Court Rice, 4 Cornford Grove, Balhatn. [We have had on more than one occasion a substance precisely resembling a small horse bean forwarded to us as havirg been'' taken out of an unbroken egg, but a thin section placed under the microscope has always revealed the fact that they were clots of inspissated blood which had escaped from the ovary, the structure of tho blood globules being perfectly distinct.— Ed.]

The cost of the great German Army- for a year under its present conditions is about L40,Q00,000. But this is far and away below the annual cojt of the United States military pensions. ,x, x