IN THE POULTRY YARD.

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXV, Issue 18286, 8 June 1929, Page 14

IN THE POULTRY YARD.

THE DUST BATH. The dust bath is one of the most necessary things that go to make up a fowl’s life. The box of dust in which they may wallow and rid themselves of lice. It is in reality a bath for them practically as much as is the water bath for a person Cwrites “Rayo” in an exchange). Note in the summer how they will lie around in the shade on a hot day or on other days in the soil then wallow in the dust. They enjoy it, and it serves the one best purpose, that of keeping down the lice. Lice cannot exist in it, and when the birds fill their full of dust the lice must go out with , the dust. It is nature’s way of keeping the lice in check. No remedies that we can use take the place of the dust bath. Of course, we whitewash the poultry-houses, paint the roosts, nests, etc., with kerosene or other lice killers and help to keep down the lice. We may also dust the fowls, but they can dust themselves with ordinary road dust if they are given a chance, and will do it well. There are several kinds of lice, and it is the body lice that the dust bath is effective against. The red mites, etc., we must get rid of otherwise. If the hens get the dust bath outdoors in the summer, and it is good for them, then we must provide it indoors in winter. Remember that lice breed and multiply in the winter, as well as the summer, although not so rapidly yet enough so that we must keep them in check. A box three feet square, or even smaller if the poultry-house room is limited or the number of fowls is small, and a foot or eighteen inches deep, about two-thirds full of road dust or shifted garden soil will provide a fine place for them to dust in, and if it can be placed where the sun will shine into it the hens will thoroughly enjoy it on any day when they are confined in the house. I prefer dry sifted soil or loam to road dust, although it is sometimes quite a lot of work to get it, yet one may gather a few dray loads in the autumn while dry and store it for use when required. If none has been stored this year, sift out some coal ashes and use the fine part for a dust bath for the fowls. The coal ashes do very well where the loam dust is not at hand. At any rate, provide the dust bath. WHY DOES A HEN GO BROODY? A hen goes broody In obedience to a natural ancestral Instruction to reproduce the species. Instinct tells the bird that if she sits on the eggs for a certain length of time that chickens will emerge therefrom to go on with the business. The instinct is blind, because the bird will sit on china eggs or infertile eggs. She does not know that they cannot produce anything, and that she would be wasting her time that way. What she does is blindly to obey the urge to sit on the eggs. The next point is that the hen’s ordinary bodily temperature is not warm enough to start germination in the eggs. What happens is this: At the time of the year when the winter is over, and the sun is nicely warm, and seeds and insects abound —the best time to start the chicken—Nature sets up ferments in the blood that raise the temperature several degrees, and when that happens the hen’s brain tells her to sit. And to make sure of the business Nature also sets up an inflammation, or irritation of the stomach and under-part of the body, which the bird can allay only by sitting down with her stomach on the eggs.—“ Hardshell." PULLETS TO ORDER. Mention has been made of the effect of a certain kind of X-ray in the matter of influencing the sex of the chicken within the egg in an exchange. Dr. Diffenbach, of New York, was referred to as being concerned in the experiments which had as their object the production of pullets at will. Briefly, this is what it is all about (states the paper): In every fertile egg | there are cells (chromosomes) that will j produce a male fowl and there are j chromosomes that will produce a | female fowl. What happens is that in the course of incubation one set of

cromosomes kills the other set, and the winner emerges as a male or female according to which Is the stronger chromosomes—that is the ordinary natural way. But, it is stated the American experiments are able to so altos the natural method as to produce pullets to order, and to so stimulate them by the destruction of any, or all, disease germs in their bodies that their growth and development are much quicker and better than tnose of pullets hatched in the ordinary way. A further claim is that the birds treated with the X-ray will be immune from disease in its future life. This is how they do it. The ray is so timed and the voltage so arranged as to kill the male chromosomes, which are weaker than those of the female. Then, by further manipulation of the ray, all disease germs in the chromosomes are killed, and the bird at the same time is made immune from disease in the future. The poultry “heads" in America and Canada are said to be keenly interested in the experiments. What is not yet known is whether all the eggs produced by the treated hens will be infertile. If they are, they will not hatch out chickens, but they will make much superior market eggs, because they cannot go bad. The experiments are interesting to poultry breeders all over the world. If the process can be made available to them as a commercial proposition, the production of eggs will be enormously increased. So far as the matter of interference with nature is concerned, something has got to break, and someone or something will have to pay the penalty, because nature will brook no interference with her laws that may affect the general balance of matters. COCKERELS AND CAPONS. The capon is a profitable production in older, richer, and more populated countries than is the case in Australia. The advice often tendered is to feed cockerels for quick growth, then fatten thoroughly and market when from four and a-half to five and a-half months old, and not waste time in caponlsing. Many experiments have been carried out in other countries, and the following extracts may give further information to those interested in the subject, and in table poultry production generally (writes "Breeder” in the “Adleaide Chronicle.”) Walt has called attention to the fact that the opinion is quite general among those interested in poultry that capons make a much more rapid growth and attain a size nearly twice that of cockerels of the same age and breed. In order to obtain some definite data on the question of the relative growth of capons and cockerels, he conducted a rather carefully controlled experiment. After analysing his results he found that there was practically no difference until the cockerels began to reach maturity, at which time the capons made slightly better gains. The breed used was the white Plymouth Rocks. In 1918 Phillips reported results of a study on the coast of raising White Plymouth Rocks. He stated that capons and cockerels grew with similar rapidity and retained similar weights until they reached 611 b, and that cockerels made gains at less cost per pound for feed than pullets or capons. Elford compared rates of fattening and economy of gains of cockerels and capons, using 22 Barred Rock cockerels and 22 Barred Rock capons. His conclusions were that the value of caponlsing lies rather in the production of meat of superior quality than in any greater efficiency of growth or fattening. Mitchel, Card and Hamilton made a comprehensive study of the growth of | White Plymouth Rocks, and also furnished comparative data on the growth of cockerels and capons. They found that the growth of the capon was not distinctly different from that of the cockerels. They state that “cockerels and capons grew at nearly the same rate up to an average weight of 61b, when the growth records were discontinued.” This was unfortunate, for with cockerels of a large breed such as Plymouth Rocks generally, it would perhaps have been more conclusive had the test continued much longer. In that case it might have been shown that the capon was eatable, in fact, first-class, when weighing 10 or 121 b, while an adult uncastrated bird of that ! weight (and age) would have been very 1 tough and of no great value as a table jbird, except for making broth. I Another writer sums it up thus: “A confusion of the terms ‘growth’ and ‘fattening’ seems to be reasonable for the different opinions held on this question. Under the usual conditions of rearing cockerels and capons, the capon seems to have a much greater tendency to fatten than the cockerels. This means that eventually the capon may become heavier than the cockerel, but, as intimated, this is due to its greater ability to grow. In fact, the writer's data seem to indicate that the capon's ability to grow, i.e., in the strict sense of the word, is somewhat lessened by the operation of caponlsing.” Another experiment showed that, in the case of Rhode Island Reds, the average cumulative growth of the two lots of cockerels was very similar to that of the two corresponding lots of capons: if anything, the cumulative growth of the latter, from the time of caponising up to 34 weeks of age, was a little less than that of the former. Up to the time of caponising (10 weeks'), the average rate of growth of the lots designated as lot 1 cockerels and lot 1 capons, was similar, as also was the case with lot 2 cockerels, and lot 2 capons.