THE POULTRY RUN

Southland Times, Issue 20648, 21 November 1928, Page 15

THE POULTRY RUN

NOTES FOR BREEDERS BEAUTY AND UTILITY. Beauty alone is not bread and meat. Much as the world needs beauty, W’e cannot live by it alone. The pleasing superstructure of beauty must rest on a foundation of utility. Usefulness and practicability should go hand in hand with beauty. They should not be divorced and beauty sacrificed. There is a special marked value in attractiveness when in combination with utility, says a writer in the north. I know two builders who acquired two adjoining pieces of property in a suburb of one of our New Zealand cities. They built an equal number of houses, and they invested the same amount of money. One of them engaged an architect who put beauty into his designs, the other builder was of a so-called practical turn of mind. He did not understand the nature of man, which calls for a beautiful home, not merely a ten ant able practical house. When it came to the sales, the real estate man, who built houses that would contribute to making home life more beautiful, realized 25 per cent, more than the offer. The home-seeker takes for granted that every house has a good foundation, and as he walks up the street he looks at the varying architecture of the different houses. He selects for his own home the one that appeals to his sense of taste and comfort. The beginner in poultry culture, likewise assumes that all hens lay and yieldup their carcases for food. He, therefore, wants a hen that is something more than a nondescript. The job of the breeder is to design and produce a beautiful fowl which also combines in her organism the capacity for practical usefulness. It is well to stop occasionally and consider the masonry in the foundation, and see if the specifications can be improved, and the groundwork made more solid. Utility must remain a fundamental consideration in the work of mating and breeding. We must always remember that constitutional vigour is the one prime factor in all lines of merely “fuss and feather.” The man who trusts that asinine sophism and breeds a small weak bird simply because it has “colour” will find that he not only loses prizes, but loses profits when he consigns his rubbish to the butcher or the saleyards. The breeder of purebreds who is worthy of consideration insists on having a chicken first, one that has a strong skull, face and beak, bright eyes, strength and proportion of body, and straight, well-modelled legs and toes. He also wants feather furnishing, and no long-headed, shallow-bodied, weak'legged specimen ever grew finish of plumace. Added to this he wants colour which lifts his birds above the commonplace and makes them akin to the feathered creatures of the woods. Hints on Management. A paraphrase of the old hymn might read: “The mistakes of my life have been many, the sins of omission have been more.” In poultry-rearing as well as in life this is true; and while this may not be timely it may prevent some of the things that happened this year from causing us both sorrow and loss next year. First, consider overcrowding as the result of hatching more chicks than we have room to grow to a marketable age. One of the first things that a beginner must learn is never to hatch all the chickens he wants at that time. Did you ever cook beans? I Well, if you have you know that the finished product is away out of proportion to the amount with which you started. Fifty is a large number for an ordinary backyarder, or most beginners if they wish to avoid overcrowding. Never permit half that number to roost in the same coop, or I in the same quarters, at least till they are grown. Second, mites are a constant source of loss not only in the slow development of the bird, but also in the colour and texture of the feather. A pound a month in the heavy breeds is as little growth as one should expect if the conditions are satisfactory. If you are not getting that amount of growth, something is wrong. Look at once to your feed and quarters. Keep your houses clean and spray at least once a week. Use air-slaked lime to kill off mosquitoes, which make life miserable for the fowls, especially in the late summer and early autumn. Sore-head, chicken-pox and roup are often directly traceable to the sting of the mosquito. Keep them out of the lupuses and coops. Lime and yam a will do it for you.

Third, keep their quarters dry. Be sure the roof does not leak, that rain does not blow through the cracks, and above all, that sunshine can reach practically every part of the floor of the building, and that it does do so. Keep straw or dry leaves on the floor to absorb any dampness that might be there, and change this litter often. An earth floor is the best kind if it can be kept dry. Do not neglect to put off. Do it now. Rearing Prize-winners. Is rearing prize-winners your ambition? There is no royal road. No one has ever reached and kept a high place except through close attention to the small details and these mentioned ones are the keys to success. A good quality of clean food is essential to the good health of fowls. Feed table scraps right from the table only: never let them do not use those from your neighbour unless they are as careful as you are yourself. If you give a wet mash do not feed more than they will clean up at once, and feed it only in a clean place. Keep a dry mash before them at all times after they are a month old. If they are inclined to get weak in the legs, the food does not contain enough bone-making ingredients. Keep plenty of finely-ground oyster shell so that they can get it any time they wish. All this is old and mere detail to experienced poultrymen; but it can never be impressed too firmly on the minds of those starting with poultry. No matter from what stock you rear your chicks, nor what kind of matings you use, nothing will take the place of good care and wholesome food. There have been prize-winners from mediocre parentage, by the above rules. To sum up the whole matter, never permit the chickens to crowd. Prevent this by hatching only as many chicks as you have room enough for. Keep the quarters clean dry, and free from mites. Do this by keeping the roof tight, the litter fresh and clean, and spraying the houses. Use only wholesome food. Give Green Food. There is no efficient substitute for green food for fowls. In the hot summer time do not overlook this point. Give your birds sprouted oats if you cannot give them silver beet, or lucerne, etc. Experiments have shown that an extra feed of green stuff after the evening meal to your fowls serves as an aid to digestion, and is a factor in high egg-production. See that a full supply of grit is kept constantly within reach of the fowls. Grit is to them as teeth ar to animals; it assists them to masticate their food.