A QUEENSLAND POULTRY FARM.

Colonist, Volume XLVI, Issue 10623, 23 January 1903, Page 4

A QUEENSLAND POULTRY FARM.

The methods adopted on a poultry farm in distant Queensland may be of interest to our readers. The folr lowing extract from the Queensland Agricultural Journal is a letter Written by Mr J. Bunnage, Gracemere 5 — "It has been very pleasant and profitable to me to read from time to time of others' experience and successes with poultry in your valuable journal, and, as t breed between 200 and 300 purebred poultry every year myself, 1 thought it might be of soifiS use to others to give some of my experience. During the breeding season all my fowls are in pens, wire netted* top and sides, and all the food the birds get has to be givSn to'thenii The size of the pens is .33 feet long by 10 feet wide. In one of these pens I put three single-comb black Orpington pullets and one cock. Early in June the hens started to lay (about June isth), and they laid 34 eggs in June. In July they laid 6d eggs, and in August they laid just the same number 65, ; and arei still laying. Out of that number I put into the incubator 93, and 88 of them proved to be fertile, altogether disproving the statement so dfttimes made that fowls cannot be kept healthy and vigorous in small runs. It^is true that very much depends on how they are cared for. My style of feeding and caring for them is this : — About sun rise X give them a scanty breakfast of one-third corn, twothirds wheat, thrown into a litter thre cor four inches deep. They scratch at this most of the morning, finding their food gradually, which is more natural than getting a large feed in a few minutes, then standing hulked up in some corner. It is a much better way of keeping your fowls warm on cold mornings than giving them a steaming hot mash of pollard* which only makes them more sensitive to cold* "The next meal is about ttoon, when I give them green feed chopped up everygother day, and the neck of beef chopped up, bone and all, every other day. I prefer lucerne to any other green feed. I have tried it both for young and full grown fowls ; it gives the yolk of the eggs a high colour, which is very much sought after by some people, and it helps to maintain the fowls in good health. At aboutfive o'clock in the evening I give the evening meal of wheat and corn, with this difference— that I give all I think they will eat. Occasionally I give a feed jot pollard at night instead of grain. I always have a tin of coarse, clean sharp sand in each pen, and plenty of clean water, and pay close attention to cleanliness."*