POULTRY NOTES

Taranaki Daily News, 13 October 1934, Page 24 (Supplement)

POULTRY NOTES

HINTS ON INCUBATING DANGERS IN WEAKENED STOCK. SIMPLE COMMON-SENSE. Soon after the incubators have been requisitioned for duty each season complaints are received of poor hatches, of chicks dead in the shells, of chicks dying rapidly after they have grown to a week or ten days’ old, etc., and anxious inquiries as to the cause and cure of the troubles are heard. The causes are decidedly numerous, and most of them date back to the poor condition of the breeding stock which produced the eggs. The term “most of them,” does not spell all of them, and I do not want to comfort those who have been remiss in duty to the eggs or incubators, or brooders, or in feeding the baby chicks by assuring them they are all right and that the blame of their poor success te “on the other fellow. It undoubtedly te true, however, that weak breeding stock te the chief cause of eggs failing to hatch, and of chick mortality after they are hatched. Much of the weakness of the breeding stock is due to preventable causes. Talking with an old and experienced poultry man about this the other day I asked him what was the cause of so much weak breeding stock. He replied, “Weak poultrymen.” After my laugh had passed he said, “Too many men who try to keep poultry want to begin at the top. They want to start in as experts instead of starting as practical poultrymen, and that te one of the thinnest spots in the business to-day.” . . I believe there te a whole lot of truth in that, and truth which has an important bearing on my subject. The state of health of the breeding stock which produced the eggs te most important to both good hatches and the ability to live afterwards; and the health of the breeding stock is not at all difficult if the poultryman has (and will use) simple common-sense. IN-BREEDING WEAKNESS. The more common causes of weak breeding stock are close in-breeding, breeding from immature stock, overfeeding and improper feeding, overshowing, unsuitable houses, general insanitary conditions—which includes lice and mites. Am I not right in agreeing with our good friend quoted above, who said the cause ■of weak stock te weak poultrymen? Also am I not right in believing that good health and vigour in the breeding stock are not at all difficult if the poutryman has, and will use, common-sense? I think so. It is undoubtedly true that too close in-breeding te a fruitful cause of weakness in the stock, and it te so difficult to trace. Our “weak poultrymen” friend spoke of this at length, and remarked that a good deal of it was due to ignorance of previous condition of the stock. For example, a man buys three settings of eggs from a breeder, rears 18 or 20 youngsters from them and has ten pullets to grow his next season’s chicks from. In 99 cases out of 100 he uses a cockerel from the lot of chicks to mate to the ten pullets, arguing to himself that it will not matter much if the stock te especially well endowed with constitutional vigour. But suppose the breeder of whom the eggs were bought had been in-breeding for some years; what then? The probability te that he has, and that the stock te already “weakened” by years of close in-breed-ing. Mating an already weakened cockerel to already weakened pullets intensifies the weakness already there. The same occurs when a man buys a breeding pen of fowls. The stock te very likely to have been bred very closely, and while it te the first year, of inbreeding for the new owner it te additional weight upon the already weakened stock. If a buyer gets hte male bird from one breeder and hte females from another he affects a crossing of two “strains,” and while such crossing stimulates and strengthens the animal vigour it throws the stock off from the lines of fine breeding. Here te where the beginner te likely to go astray. He desires to continue the fine lines of the former breeding and so continues the close inbreeding; in other words he te an expert before he te a practical poultryman. An English poultryman of wide experience wrote some time ago: “Too close in-breeding will diminish ruggedness in health and give greater predisposition to delicacy of constitution. Line breeding, unless practiced scientifically and systematically—avoiding frequent consanguineous matings—te a fruitful source of predisposition to disease. Predisposition to tuberculosis te a bane of too close in-breeding, whether of humans, cattle or fowls.” I would like to amend that by adding that mollycoddling, over-feeding and housing in all-ventilated houses are also aids to tuberculosis and other ills of hens and humans.

Breeding from immature stock is another cause of a gradual weakening of strength and vigour, and the avoidance of breeding from immature stock is one argument in favour of using only eggs from mature hens to hatch the chicks from. Another point in favour of hens’ eggs is that the hens have manifested their constitutional vigour by surviving the drain of a moult and the rigours of a second winter; hence they are assuredly strong.

Pullets are all right to breed from if they are fully mature and laying before cold weather. Pullets that were late hatched and do not come to laying maturity until the winter is practically over are almost certain to be weak and their eggs to produce weak chicks. An extreme example of rearing late hatched and late maturing pullets to sell for breeders came to my notice three or four years ago. I was visiting a wellknown fancier, a breeder of a popular variety and one who has made a lot of money by selling his stock at good prices. There were about 100 early hatched chicks running about, and more than 300 October and November hatched chicks scattered over the farm (it was January). When I asked the cause of and the reason for so many youngsters I was told blushingly that they had a big call for hatching eggs in August and September, and consequently, with the exception of the last of the July eggs set, that they had done almost no hatching till October and November. “But,” I was told, “that is all right. We get the biggest call for breeding stock about spring, and these late hatched pullets and cockerels will be just right to send off to fill those orders.” In other words, they had enough early hatched birds for the autumn shows, etc., and the late and immature birds would be sold to unsuspecting amateurs for a start in breeding.

Throw out of your matings every bird that shows any indication of impaired vitality and that seems at all lacking in strength and vigour. If we will manfully live up to that admonition the fight will be won.