Poultry Notes

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXI, Issue 18967, 19 March 1924, Page 9

Poultry Notes

By

“CHANTICLEER”

CYSTIC OVARY OR DROPSY. We have been asked the cause of cystic ovary. Ovarian cysts are inperfectly developed ova, they vary in size and contain a colourless liquid. They are attached to the ovary by pedicles, or little tubea; these extend and allow the passage of the liquid, so that the cyst presently lies in the body cavity and may greatly extend. Another source of apparently similar bags of water may exist where abdominal dropsy is present. In dropsy the fluid may accumulate within the thin layer or fold tissue serving to cover or line some part or organ; the fluid penetrating thus far owing to a rupture of a blood vessel. Both diseases are. practically incurable and the .difference between them can only be ascertained by post mortem examination. The cause or origin is what we are chiefly concerned in. 111-advised breeding may lead to cystic ovary disease. It is due primarily to weakness or deficiencies; which in a measure are hereditary or capable of transmision, says D .F. Laurie, who has probably investigated this disease more than any other man in the world.

In young birds, dropsy is general} - due to deficiencies or poverty of blood writes Woodroffe Hill and in old birds to the obstructed return of used blood to the heart. It may also arise from structural disease of the liver, tumors —especially scrofulous and enlarged giands. It may also indicate a tuberculous condition, according to Dryden. We can only kill hens suffering from both diseases with our present knowledge and attempt to prevent the occurrence of both, by breeding only from healthy stock and feeding all the fowls’ requirements in animal vegetable and mineral matter.

SEPARATING SEXES IN ADULTS.

An article on the practice of separating the sexes*in chicks was published in issue 2/2/’24. Edward Brown, in Feathered World, commenting on same, brings forward the far more debatable subject of whctheY adult cocks and hens should be kept separate, as regards flocks of layers and breeding birds during the ‘'off” sea-' son. He states: “That the denial of physical relationship between male and female has an unfavourable influence on the maintenance of the vigor of the body.” Quoting as authorities on the subject, Professor Patrick Geddes and J. Arthur Thompson, authors of “Sex.”

This is a very important subject for poultry-farmers, as the practice of segregating large flocks of hens as layers without the male birds becomes daily more in evidence and the usual separation of the breeding birds during the moult is in progress or has been done. Many of us have always kept the breeding birds dividen into their respective sexes during moult, with what the authors of ‘Sex’ would term a fond delusion, because they definitely state: “There is a limit to successive asexual divisions and conjugation must occur, else the whole life ebbs.” This is the reason that some cocks, ’ after months of isolation during the moult, prove sterile. If hens are kept as layers only, they produce a better market egg and cheaper without the presence of the males; but, if the pronouncement in “Sex” is right, they should never be subsequently used for breeding from. The breeding stock will have to be treated naturally not artificially and from the age at which they are fit to mate, be allowed to give play to all fhe forces and instincts which are found in the animal body, until they are disposed of. INSECTS AND SLUGS. Mr. A. Roebuck reports that,- in conjunction with Mr, Shaw at the Midland (England) Agricultural College, he built a small well-lighted poultry house with a concrete floor, into which ho had Inserted an assortment of hens. He fed them in the ordinary manner but varied their diet with a weird collection of insects, catterpilars, and slugs, harmful to plant life, to see which they would gobblo up readily. He found that after very little hesitation they would mop up a small blue beetle which is causing much damage to certain willow plantations; the mustard beetle, which, apart from playing havock in mustard fields, also has a liking for turnips, cabbages, and watercress; turnip sawfly; winter moth, a serious apple pest; rase caterpillars; laki moths, which the poultry would piek up when they dropped from webs in the fruit trees; cutworms and chrysallises; cabbage butterflies, wireworms, pear midge snails, of which they would curiously eat the shells only, and the creamy or grey field slug. They would eat the black or the brown Limax mixims slugs, but the grey was the most harmful. In the case of the pear midge they would eat the maggots present in the fallen pear and leave the shell, thus windfalls need not necessarily be harmful to poultry. The value of this was, as Mr. Roebuck showed, that the farmer had in the hen the best weapon for destroying his harmful insect pest. He merely had to fold the poultry on to the infested field with a colony house and plough it up. There was no need to resort to insecticides or spraying, which, in any case, the farmer” was quite unable to employ on the grounds of expense. BUSINESS METHODS. Business methods may not alone ensure success, but few people ever make a success of the live stock business without them. The no-account poultry plant is apt to degenerate into the poultry plant of no account, for shiftless haphazard ways of doing things soon spoil any business. They do that! Good bookkeeping, penmanship, and spelling, though desirable, are not necessary. The.great essential is to start a simple book or set of books now, and jot down everything therin so that you understand it yourself. Then, once or twice a year, take stock by totalling up the sums of receipts and expenditure and estimating the present value of live stock on hand, so that you know just

where you are and what profit, cr lona has resulted from ths last year or half-year of trading. Of course, this means a certain amount of extra trouble; but it has always been the trouble taken with things that-couats. “Seest thou a man diligent ip- ltrs business, he shall stand before kings.’ That is as true to-day as it was wt-en King Solomon wrote it. SIZE OF PULLET EGGS. The puilet, who plays about with her food, will not Jay large eggs. Under feeding, cheap food, not enough green food, or water makes for small eggs. Keep up the size of eggs by breeding and rearing properly. Set on.y the 240 Z. egg, and there is a better chance of maintaining the 2oz. standard. The value of the medium layer of large eggs, will be better recognised, when wc realise that in breeding from heavy layers only we lose size of frame and egg. Pullets are made or marred in the rearing, for size of egg. They must be kept growing in frame, and if necessary held back a little. Pullets from heavy layers tend the most to lay too early; their yolks are immature! in such a case and size of egg ruined.

A pullet’s first egg is not up to her standard of weight, her twentieth can be taken as a rough guide. She should be discarded if starting with a IJoz. egg, 2oz. is not reached within three months.- It is a good pullet who starts with a IJoz. egg, and reaches 2oz. within a month or two, after laying heavily. It is a good sign to reach standard size quickly. Breed for preference from the pullets laying 21oz. eggs in their second year, if they lay 160 eggs and over. Here quality will make up for quantity. In breeding keep up the size of your fowls, at th’e same time -seeing that they handle well for texture or capability. Then they will lay well and large eggs. Once lose capacity and size of eggs goes. Some small looking hens lay large eggs, but they handle big for frame; exceptions will always turn up. YELLOW OR WHITE MAIZE. Experiments recently conducted at the School of Agriculture, Potctietstrom, South Africa, to determine the relative food values of yellow and white maize, gave conclusive evidence of the superiority of yellow maize. Two pens with 12 light breed chicks between two and three weeks’ old in each were fed respectively crushed yellow dt white maize with thick sour milk in the morning, and crushedyellow or white maize dry at night. 1116 skimmed milk was always allowed to sour and thicken. Prior to use 4 to lin. of the surface was removed, so that the chicks on white maize would not get much fat soluble. A vitamime from the milk—which white maize lacks but yellow maize contains. Both pens had free access to oyster shell and grit and to prevent lack of mineral s alts upsetting results, each pen got in their mash daily half a teaspoonful of a salt mixture, as follows: one part Epsom’s salts, one part Glauber’s salts, eight parts charred bone meat, two parts calcium of lime. The yards in which the test was conducted were bare of green food; green lucerne was first given after 17 weeks from the start of the test.

In the first 38 days, eight out of the 12 chicks fed on white maize died, but only one fed on yellow maize had died under identical symptoms, i.e., deficiency of fat soluble. A vitamine. Chicks fed on white maize became almost at once dull and listtheir feathers were ruffled and lacked gloss, their combs were pale. Their skins became dry and scabby an# some had eye trouble.

After nearly six weeks’ trial the chicks on white maize were put on yellow' and the other pen put on white maize. No more deaths then occurred in the pen who had first been fed on white maize. But the pen who had been changed to white maize fell off in appearance like the first pen to whom it was given. With the introduction of green lucerne, this lot of chicks, however, rapidly regained x their former vigor and appearance and their gains in growth for the last two weeks of the test, were nearly equal to those on yellow maize.

The results show clearly that when white maize constitutes the main portion of the feeding, it must be supplemented in addition to milk, with such things as beef fat, fish oil, liver, cream, etc.; also that green food such as lucerne, cabbage, lettuce, spinach must be given regularly.

LOCATION OF A POULTRY FARM. The position of fowl runs in relation to hills or even slight' eminences, to timber, or any kind of shelter is of more importance than is usually credited. If you have your farm on a hillside, there is the question of aspect to be considered; a westerly or southern slope, will give you late marning sunshine in the winter and

exposure to all our coldest winds, also the temperature will vary greatly in places within a few hundred yards of each other. Fowls abhor wind; heavy, continuous wind has a bigger effect on egg production than rain; on flat country there must be artificial shelter if there is none naturally; for this purpose, hedges are best—even if only of saltbush and now the time is approaching to plant came. Such hedges will in a year or two look infinitely better than any artificial shelter. If you are unfortunate enough to have a farm on lowlying ground: which perhaps raised fine stock last season—when it was dry; where heavy autumn' fogs will hang soon, the best thing to do is to get a farm on better drained land.