THE POULTRY RUN

Southland Times, Issue 19276, 21 June 1924, Page 11 (Supplement)

THE POULTRY RUN

(By “Leghorn”). Southland fanciers are doing well at the Balclutha Poultry Show as will be seen from the following wire received in Invercargill yesterday: “Mr Harris Ist and champion for cockerel, Ist in pullet; Mr McColl Ist in cock, Ist in cockerel, and special.” When a white bird is in full feather just through the moult and ready for the show pen, keep him in a good dry place, where he cannot get into any dirt that is liable to stain his feathers, for, if once a white feather is badly stained, the stain is very hard to remove, and the bird never has the clear white appearance of a bird that has been kept clean. If • you have a number of yoimg cockerels and pullets that you are shading from the weather never let them out on any condition when the atmosphere is damp, for if their feathers get damp and then the J-un shines on them, it will just brass them up and ruin them until they have moulted. The hot, dry sun does not do the feathers half so much damage as dampness and then sun. This not only causes the feathers to become brassy but kills the life of the feathers and it will ruin the feathers on even a black or coloured bird. In fact, show birds of any breed, if caught in a shower of rain, should be put right into the house until they are dry and not be allowed to dry in the sun. Once a bird becomes brassy or tanned no chemical or bleach of any description will remove it. Maize should on no account be fed to white or light-coloured birds. According to an American paper, “Egglaying contests were conducted in Australia five or six years before they were conducted in the United States. As a result 10 years ago, Australia was 15 years ahead of the United States in matters concerning eggproduction.” The paper I am quoting, after making its gracious admission goes on to say: ‘The effect of stimulating interest in egg production was unquestionably a good influence.” And then it asks: “What then are the harmful effects’ The public has carried the issue too far. Too much significance has been attached to individual records. It has gone to extremes on egg production. Sir John Mandeville, who travelled in the East about 500 years ago, writing of Egyptian incubators, says:—“And there is a •ommon house in that city that is full of small furnaces, and hither bring women of the town their epren—eggs —of hens, of geese, and of ducks for to be put into those furnaces. And they that keep that house cover them with heat of horsedung without heat of hen, goose, or duck, or any other fowl. And at the end of three weeks or of a month they come again and take their chicks and onurish them and bring them forth, so that the country is full of them. And so do men there, both winter and summer." The Chinese methods are thus described by a more recent traveller:—‘The building is merely a straw-thached shed, at the side, generally, of a cottage. Straw baskets are ranged along the ends and one side of the shed and plastered with clay to render them incombustible, and a till forms the bottom, beneath which a small fire burns. A straw cover is placed over each basket during the process. In the centre are wide shelves over each other, to receive the eggs at a certain stage of the operation. These being placed in the baskets, a fire is lighted, r.nd a steady heat between 95 and 102 degrees, but regulated by no better thermometer than the sensations of the attendant is kept up. As in the Egyptian process, the eggs are taken up, after undergoing for a few flays the first heating process, one by one, and the infertile ones rejected. After nine or ten days more, the fertile eggs are removed from the baskets and spread on shelves covered up with cotton or some similar substance, but without fire underneath, and thus they remain during fourteen days more, when the ducklings burst their shells; and in two days afterwards they are sold and carried off.”