POULTRY NOTES.

Waikato Times, Volume 109, Issue 18229, 17 January 1931, Page 19 (Supplement)

POULTRY NOTES.

■ : i INTERESTING ITEMS. A small bottle of iodine should always he kept handy in each large laying house, for wounds on combs, faces and mouths, also suspicious , lumps in the mouth. If the iodine has to he fetched the necessary applicaI lion so often gets passed over. | The Silkio is not a bantam. The j English Silkie Club holds that so .long as the quality is right the bigger the ! Silkie is the better. Thus, unless i separate classilieation is provided, its I place is in the “any other variety” light breed class. How many poultry farmers make a practice of opening for examinaton every hen and chick tliaf dies? If a watch, gramophone or wireless set I goes wrong the' veriest novice begins [ to examine the inside, and learns a lot

about It in doing so. Owing to temperament, a hen which would lay 280 eggs in a single pen may only produce 250 in a flock. Research points strongly to the conclusion that the percentage of fertile eggs laid during the hatching season is a characteristic peculiarity of the individual hen, but this characteristic does not seem to he 'transmitted, so that if a hen has poor fertility it does not necessarily, follow thaj, her pullets will have low fertility also. An American poultry farmer has boys selling eggs in cantons in the street, like newspaper's. The boys also make a house-to-house canvass of their territory. They are paid 2Ad per dozen on sales. The theory is advanced by the “Reliable Poultry Journal” that the defect of crooked breastbone is not inherited, hut a certain softness of the bone is hereditary, which favours development of the defect. In compiling the daily laying of your flock so that a yearly average may be calculated it is equally important to record the daily number of layers. With regard to pullets coming on to lay we would only record the greatest number that have laid in one day until, say, one-third of the lot are laying daily. This daily number of layers is added up and divided by the number of days, when you wish to strike an average, and the result should then be divided into the number of eggs laid. In the Middle Ages the cock was considered the special enemy of the evil one, and so was placed upon all buildings as a weather vane. The belief then prevalent was that all evil influences which roamed about in the darkness were dispelled by his first lusty crow, and fled hastily away.— The Field.