THE POULTRY RUN

Southland Times, Issue 19123, 15 December 1923, Page 11 (Supplement)

THE POULTRY RUN

(By “Leghorn”). Fowls will greedily consume scraps of boiled cabbage thrown to them, but it should not be overlooked that cabbage, when boiled, loses four-fifths of its antiscorbutic properties. Potatoes, on the other hand, are of greater value when cooked. An English writer on poultry states that the decrease in the size of the egg is one of the first signs of degeneration of flock. The warm weather will soon affect the egg supply; the green feed will be scarce and hard to obtain; the little green feed available to many is tough and almost worse than none. Sprouted oats or barley can always be had for a little trouble; it grows rapidly at this time. Lettuce and lucerne will be the main stay for many where water is plentiful. Cool water and shade is most important now; the hens get out foraging early these days, and the wise poultryman will have the water supply ready for them at dawn. The greater part of the food will also be eaten in the early morn; if the birds get well satisfied early in the day they will rest in the shade the greater part of the day and the eggmaking process will go on much the same as on cool days. To make the eggs the hen must have material at hand, and on hot days they will not forage around, but starve rather than hunt for food; early morn and in the cool of the evening is the foraging time for hens in hot weather.

The dust bath is important now. This should be in a cool shaded spot, and the soil should be made damp; a simpler plan is to throw the stale water and the washings of the drinking troughs into the shady spots and the birds will soon be dusting in them. The lice must be dealt with also. They multiply rapidly if given a chance. The nest boxes will require constant treatment with a good lice killing liquid, and fresh nesting material will be needed often. Each day as you attend to your fowls spend as much time with them as possible. Study their habits and wants, note their conditions. A little time spent thus every day will be fruitful of good results, not only in egg production, but in health and growth as well. Get plenty of green stuff for the coming summer months. You will need it all.

It is just as well to look over the stock occasionally, and if any insects are found, apply a good insect powder. A pound or two of sulphur, either black or yellow’, should be placed in the usual dust bath. Keep a sharp eye on incipent disease. Some birds find it easier to contract a chill in the hot months than later on. « Put a pinch of permanganate of potash, or powdered sulphate of iron into the drinking w’ater RAW GREEN FOOD. It may always be taken that raw green food is better than cooked, remarks an English writer. Certainly the raw is a better source of vit amines. No winter grass has the same quality as summer grass, but fowls eat green clover greedily at any time, and this is why w’e slag so much on poultry rims and on light soils use potash also. With cabbage and raw swedes to peck at in addition, there will be no lack of green food. In cereals we reject bran because nearly half of. it is undigested, we leave out .barley because experience has taught us that it has an injurious action upon the liver, and confine ourselves almost to wheat, oats, and maize. Even maize is used far too much, and its chief use is in very cold weather, and in the autumn before grain has been properly matured in the stack. The effect of damp w’heat is very marked upon young growing stock, and I have seen them scour and go to shadows on it, and be almost in as bad a condition as when getting too much fruit and mangolds. I do not like peas, beans, gram, lentils, malt culms, brewers’ grains, wet or dried, for poultry. Potatoes and fermented bread must be given very sparingly, if at all. Rice and rye are fine foods for layers, and dari is usually dearer than the other grains mentioned.

Each food contains something which others have not, and that is the strongest argument in favour of variety. In addition to the foods already mentioned, we find this in such by-products as best biscuit waste and maize gluten feed. The fine grinding of Sussex ground oats does not add anything to the feeding value, but the fowl can extract more nutriment from it, and it enables us to use more oats than we could whole or roughly ground with safety. On the approach of winter we must pay attention to housing without draughts and dry bedding for floors, but even these are of secondary’ importance to the supply of varied, nourishing, and easily digested foods.