POULTRY NOTES.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 8208, 2 August 1905, Page 6

POULTRY NOTES.

A Visit to the IWomahaki

State Farm

(I)// our Special Contributor)

The breeding season has just commenced at the Momahaki State Farm, and so far the poultry section has hatched about three hundred strong and healthy chickens. Seven 100-egg capacity incubators are used—-tv.: , ., 'three Prairie State, three Cyphers, and one Hearson's. All these machines arc kept in a specially constructed building that does not vary in temperature much above or below 50 degrees. When chickens are hatched they are allowed to remain forty-eight hours in the incubator before being removed to the brooder house. For the first three or four days they are kept in a small brooder, at a temperature at about 90 degrees. After this they are transferred to what is known as the large brooder. This is a long shed containing some twelve brooders, and the whole lot are heated with hot water pipes that run along inside each one. The chicks are first placed at one end of the building, and as they get older they are moved from one compartment to another till they reach the other end. As they shift along the heat gradually diminishes, and by the time they go through the last stage they are "strong enough to go into the cold brooder. This is a room with a glass front facing the sun.

The chicks are kept in this brooder till they are about three months old, and are then put out in colony houses all over the farm. These are built on sledges, and can be shifted to fresh ground with horses. The birds in colony houses are fed twice a day, but they require very little feeding owing to the amount of animal food they pick up in the paddocks.

The first meal tiie chickens get after leaving the incubator is dry coarse oatmeal. After the second day hard boiled eggs are mixed with the oatmeal and rubbed very fine. They are never allowed access to cold water to drink, " the chill" always being taken off it. After the first week they receive a mixture of oatmeal, pollard and pea meal, moistened with a little milk. This is all rubbed through a fine sieve, and fed often and sparingly.