THE POULTRY RUN.

Waipa Post, Volume VIII, Issue 347, 8 September 1914, Page 8

THE POULTRY RUN.

ESSENTIALS IN FEEDING.

The nature of birds is to select such foods as are necessary for their physical needs, and they will usually balance their own ration if given a chance. We often overdo the thing when it comes to feeding poultry. We try to rely too much on our own knowledge for the science of feeding, and fail to give the hen credit for having any sense or natural capacity. Essentials in poultry feeding are:

1. Cleanliness, drink, and feed. 2. Quality, wholesome and untainted. 3. Quantity. 4. Whole, cracked } and ground

grains. 5. Palatability. 6. Variety. 7. Regularity. 8. Exercise. 9. Access to fresh earth. 10. Adaptability. 11. Economy. 12. G’s—grits, grains, grubs, gumption.

1. The importance of cleanliness cannot be over-estimated. If poultry are forced to eat, live, and sleep amidst filth disease is almost certain to follow.

2. The quality of the food should be unquestioned. It should be wholesome and untainted. 3. Judgment and common sense the essentials.

4. Whole, cracked and ground grains should be used for best results.

5. It is no use trying to force birds to eat what is not palatable. 6. Variety often makes food palatable.

7. In our egg-laying contests we have certain hours for everything. The large majority of the hens are out watching for the feed man when the time has arrived for certain feeds, tf you expect the hens to be regular in he production of osrgs. you must be regular in your practices. Is not this regularity of feeding to a great extent accountable for the large averages obtained? 8. Exercise is very essential. The hen will lay more. She is the few creatures in life that seem to enjoy work, and never crows, cackles, or brags about what she does until she has .delivered the goods. Give her exercise. .

9. Cultivate the ground and grow some green food in your poultry yards. It sweetens the soil. 10. The food which you use should be adaptable to the purpose for which they are intended. That is ; if for baby chicks, growing stock, breeding stock, or laying hens, select foods adapted for -that particu’ar purpose. 11. It is not necessary that the ration for poultry be extravagant. We must look out for simplicity and economy in compounding a ration. A good poultry food for stock of any age cannot well be compounded without it consists of the five G’s —grit, grain greens, grubs, and gumption. If pullets are intended for the production of large quantities of eggs, after they have been properly matured, they must have a large quantity of food—that is, they must have more than enough for mere maintenance of the body. Each hen takes a certain amount of feed to maintain her body to satisfy her own bodily needs, and the surplus which you give her she manufactures into flesh and eggs. That breeding and selection is Vastly more important than is any group of feeds which we might recommend. The object in feeding a hen is to develop the ovules which breeding and nature have already placed and made a part of the ovary of a hen. No feed which you might give a hen would overcome a mistake in breeding, or would produce within that hen something which nature had not provided for,_and made possible. Some hen are so built that it is possible for them to lay but few, if any, eggs. Therefore, we can see the necessity of breeding for egg production.

ON ROUP,

On roup Mr. E. Brown, F.L.Z., the noted English authority, says:—“Roup is really a combination of diseases, as it embraces a cold in the head and derangement of the digestive system, or, as is more often the case, scrofula in the system. In many instances tile scrofula or stomach derangement has been previously quiescent, but cold having been induced by a sudden change in the weather or from exposure, disease is developed, and takes the form of roup. Externally there are all the symptoms as in, common cold, viz., running at the nostrils, sneezing, or cough, and in many cases a puffing up or swelling around the eyes. In the worst forms there is a cheesy substance below the eyelid, sometimes entirely covering up the eye.” The causes of roup are: —Damp, cold, insufficient ventilation, insanitary conditions, and contagion.

If you think your birds are weakening in vigour, it would be wise to introduce new blood in the shape of farmraised stock. In breeding any live stock it is always a wise plan—when new blood is wanted—to bring In stock that has been raised in the country. The reason: Because the open air conditions and the free run that farm fowls have causes them to be of robust constitution