POULTRY NOTES.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LIV, Issue 13487, 30 July 1907, Page 8

POULTRY NOTES.

At the New Plymouth Drill Hall yesterday Messrs. Webster Bros, conducten an auction sale of pure-bred poultry, including numerous prize-winners at the show. There was only a small attendance, and bidding was not at all brisk.

Mr. J. Goodwin has fifty-two Leghorn chicks out of fifty-five eggs hatched in a sixty-egg Nonpareil Incubator.

Poultry farming, said the Chief Expert, Mr. D. D. Hyde, at Hamilton, last week, was not a business, as was generally supposed, " for old women," but was an important adjunct to farming, which should be taken up by everyone interested in agricultural pursuits. In the past the egg-layer had only been a secondary consideration, with the result that they had bad layers. In order to make a living out of fowls, they must not think of anything less than 1000 birds. Egg-laying competitions were all very well, but they did not prove that poultry farming would not pay, as in connection therewith they had the maximum amount of labour for the minimum number of stock. ' y Mr W. G. Goodwin has just imported from the Wharepaka Poultry Farm, Australia, a couple of promising white Leghorn pullets.

A mechanical device for labour-saving in poultry-feeding has been invented by two residents' of Petone. It is in the form of a large hopper, capable of holding, say, a month's supply of grain; from the bottom of the hopper is a shoot, &t the end of which is a device similar to the valve of a -powder flask, by means |of which an exact supply of grain can be measured and discharged. The grain on being released falls on a circular disc,! which distributes it over the scratching shed. The feeder can be operated by a cord in the caretaker's office many yards away, and thus an immense saving can be made in the laborious work of feeding the fowls.