THE POULTRY INDUSTRY.

New Zealand Journal of Agriculture, Volume VI, Issue 3, 15 March 1913, Page 335

THE POULTRY INDUSTRY.

F. C. Brown

April Work.

April is a month of the year when the pullet must be depended on for the main egg-yield. The majority of the old birds. are passing through the moult, and will not lay well till the latter end of- winter and in spring. Obviously the main objective at the present time is to give the pullets every opportunity to -produce the dear-season egg. They should, of course, -be now well settled in their winter quarters,for changing pullets from house to house after they have commenced to lay is only inviting the moulting process. They should be receiving

a plentiful supply of good food, with, green material in abundance. The meat ration should, where possible, be given by itself at a regular time —say, at midday; though. where meat substitutes have to be fed, these can be supplied with the morning mash. It is unwise, however, to provide the same proportion of meat food to every member of the flock irrespective of the individual egg-laying capacity. I have seen a pen of six record layers ravenously eat up a 1 lb. piece of boiled liver, while an adjoining pen of six poor layers would not touch the meat. This was a repeated occurrence not only with the pens in question, but with other pens of varying egg-producing capacity. In the case cited the heavy-laying birds ate up every . particle of the 1 lb. weight of liver day after day. without any harmful effect, and this in face of the fact that the hot morning mash was mixed with meat-soup. The result was that' they established a record in eggyield and were in excellent condition at the end .of their season of exceptional production. In feeding meat substitutes great care is necessary to guard against ill effects following the feeding of the concentrated nitrogenous material. It is not to be supposed that only heavy layers have ovarian troubles, generally the result of an oversupply of blood-meal. I have . seen one of the. poorest layers in a flock affected with this trouble. She had been forced to eat in her morning mash a much higher proportion of blood-meal than her nature demanded, and with the inevitable, result.

Green food is always a necessary accompaniment to healthy and vigorous stock, to say nothing of the rich yolk colour always to be found where the birds have a plentiful supply of green stuff. There is nothing better than watercress. The best-looking flocks I have f seen lately have been receiving liberal supplies of this cheap food material.

One man who secures a cartload of watercress a day has his pullets laying at top, and his flock in the pink of condition; his eggs have a most attractive yolk colour, and he finds the cress an excellent means of reducing his feed bill. The cress is chaffed and fed separately in troughs. It is little economies like . this that go to make up the difference between profit and loss.

If eggs are to be produced in winter good feeding is imperative. It is desirable, of course, to produce them at the lowest possible cost, but this principle can be carried too far. If eggs are to be secured in heavy supply in cold weather the birds must be kept at concert pitch, and the best means of doing this is. to provide the birds with an abundant supply of the most desirable foods. I have seen pig-potatoes and waste vegetables boiled up- and mixed with a little pollard as a morning mash. Neither did the owner feed any animal food. He complained that his fowls were not paying although from a great laying strain. It would have been surprising had they done so. The best layer will not be profitable if she has not the necessary material from which -to produce her special egg-yield. Of course, the poor layer will not be profitable if fed on the ration demanded by the bird of heavy-laying • strain. It is a commonly accepted rule with all classes of stock that if the maximum results are to be secured the animal capable of it must be fed to the very best advantage. The day is gone for the argument to hold water that a fowl is too fat to lay. If she becomes ■ fat she is not a high--type layer, for the bird capable of laying- two hundred eggs or over in the season cannot be overfed, even if an ample supply of the right class of food is . always before her. Of course, her natural tendency to lay eggs may be checked and her energy diverted to flesh and fat formation if she is provided with the wrong class of food — a sloppy innutritions ration, instead of a balanced and concentrated diet including a safe proportion of nitrogenous material.

It cannot be expected that pullets will lay well in cold weather unless they have' everything in their favour. They must be quartered in dry, roomy houses where no vermin is allowed to live. They should be also managed intelligently. Never allow- them to wait about in a wet yard on a cold morning for their breakfast. Feed them in the house at all times, throwing the evening- grain in litter. They will have something to scratch for in the early morning— thus obtain the necessary exercise the grains of corn left from the evening meal. The scratching-quarters should be roomy enough to comfortably accommodate all the birds, so that in cold and wet weather they need not go into the runs at all; but it is not advisable to keep the layers continually confined. If the quarters are comfortable, and the birds are habitually fed and watered in them, they will only go out in

favourable weather. Of course, it is possible to keep laying birds always under cover, but I prefer to believe that the birds will be more healthy and vigorous if given every opportunity to use runs in decent weather.

Advancing Utility Type.

If the laying competitions have taught one lesson more convincing than another it is the important bearing of the moulting-period on profitable production. The bird that holds out longest most persistent layer— the bird that is in the lead in the competitions ; in other words, the first bird to moult is too often the last bird when the year’s yields come to be published; and the experience of the laying competitions is being repeated on private plants all over the country. I was visiting a poultryman the other day who complained to me that his last season’s pullets have not given the same yield as did those of the previous season —in fact, they were going into a deep moult. This was the second week in February. I went carefully through the flock, and noticed that a fair percentage exhibited no sign of moultin fact, they were still laying heavily. I made the pointed remark that there were a good many birds in the flock which were worth breeding from—the best of these late moulters; but the owner disagreed with me, although he admitted that the birds in question were laying heavily, and were therefore probably among his most profitable layers. But the birds in a heavy moult had come from a particular breeder, and he therefore intended to breed from them—this notwithstanding they had no laying pedigree behind them. I am afraid this is a common mistake.. If nothing is known about the laying ancestry of a fowl, she assuredly must be judged on her own performance, and there is no better rough guide to performance than the time at which she moults, and the extent of that moult. When we speak of pedigree of performance, it must be understood that the egg-record not only of the mother but that of . the mother of the father must be known. Of course,, there are birds, however desirable the pedigree possessed, which fail to come up to the standard, and must be culled, for there are wasters in the purest strains ever bred. It should be also clearly understood that it is not always the best performer that is the best breeder. It is an accepted principle by all who have concerned themselves in the advancement of types in the animal kingdom that it is only the type which has been bred true to a given ideal from generation to generation which has the power to transmit desired characters. It will often be found' that the medium layer, descended in the right way and built on the right lines, is the more desirable stock bird. . Take the characteristics to be looked for in their respective.. order of merit:. 1, Constitution ; .2, pedigree of performance :

3, individual performance ; 4, possession of utility characters ; 5, trueness of type. Or, more briefly put, laying-capacity and possession of the desired constitutional, utility, and breed points. The common argument I have been met with in laying down these principles to individual breeders is, “ Oh ! I have had a layer, the best bird on the nest I ever saw, and she was nothing to look at either as a layer or a type of the breed.” This may be true enough ; but “ one swallow does not make a summer.” There are freaks and exceptional animals in all classes of stock, but these do not prove a principle to be wrong; they merely constitute the exception which proves the rule.

After all, it is not the single high-type individual we are after so much as a flock of them; nor even the swell competition-pen which can put up .a record and which is, the selected half-dozen from a flock of hundreds. The objective of the poultryman should be to breed a flock of sturdy layers of a uniform type which plainly exhibit the desired points referred to—constitution, laying-power, and breed characters. It is no easy matter to attain this ideal, and it is even more difficult to perpetuate the type when once it has been secured. Too much importance - cannot be attached to constant study of the eggyielding type, so that the layer may be distinguished at a glance. When this facility is attained all else will follow. There is a limit, of course, to all things, and if everything is sacrificed to eggyield something will suffer. Constitution will be weakened, the size of the. eggs will decline, ovarian troubles will be intensified, and the difficulty of rearing vigorous stock will be increased. The danger in improving a character by weakening another should always be kept in mind, and while aiming at the ideal laying form see that other important features are not sacrificed in the process. There is a limit to which we can go in the laying-capacity of a bird, and if phenomenal layers only are. looked for, the power responsible for it will weaken with the poorer constitution which must result. ■ The laying competitions have done good work, but they are capable of working much harm. It is high time the chief honours were awarded to the birds producing the greatest weight of eggs in the year rather than the largest number. The consumer will soon protest against paying full market rates for miniature eggs. With the prevailing tendency I can see a revival in some of the old popular breeds, such as the original type of Minorca, by reason of the fine large eggs they produce, especially when the market value of eggs is fixed according to quality rather than on the mixed and doubtful lines sold through the city auctionrooms. • ■ . The best thing the laying competitions have done has been to expose the' show monstrosities. In the earlier competitions it was proved that'

the utility , type of White Leghorn could lay well over two hundred eggs in the year. This fact has not been added to, while the strivingafter higher records has reduced the value of many strains of White Leghorns by bringing about deterioration in the size of the eggs they produce.

It should hardly be necessary to again emphasize the importance of proper feeding and careful management if a flock of laying-birds is to be made really profitable.

Constitution

The problem of the age is the maintenance of constitution. In a state of nature constitution is effectively maintainedthe strongest male selects the best breeding female by reason of brute force. With, the advent of civilization and man’s interference with the breeding of the animals he has domesticated, natural selection is rendered impossible, and man has not the wit nor the knowledge.. to mate according to nature’s dictation.

The history of the domestic fowl is a striking instance. With the natural process of selection impossible, we have improved the eggyielding capacity to such an. extent that every ounce of stamina is demanded if the modern high-type layer is to continue its great artificial production without bringing about its deterioration. The fact cannot be too strongly emphasized that the greater demands we make on a fowl by way of egg-yield the greater the care we must exercise in seeing that her vigour is not impaired in the process, while we must take every means to see that she has all the care and attention (particularly in the matter of housing and feeding) which she demands if she is to produce her maximum and if her breeding-power is not to be lowered. Disease is the thing the poultryman has most to fear, and we know that the more we remove an animal from natural conditions of life and production the greater the tendency to contract disease. The best way to fight disease is by never allowing the constitution to deteriorate, and to house the birds in fresh air but draught-proof and roomy quarters, and feed them liberally with sound and suitable food. The more artificial the animal the greater the care demanded of the owner, and there is no domestic animal of a more artificial type than the New-Zealand-bred egg stamp of White Leghorn.

In many tribes of .farm stock breeders have attained .almost an ideal in a certain character of an animal, only to find that their life’s work has been thrown away, because in the process they neglected constitution. Breeders of utility poultry stock should heed the lesson and see to it that in aiming for extreme egg-production they do not neglect the vital consideration of constitution, or the power of production without

deterioration of the animal vigour. It has been declared that the heavy-laying White Leghorn known to this country is weaker in constitution than the type from which it sprang. This is an exaggeration. While no doubt some strains are exhibiting the effect of striving, for yield alone, in reduced size of fowl and egg, there are still strains in the country which retain the needed stamina with great productive power. The warning, however, is there. If we would permanently succeed we must consider something other than performance, for we can attain productive capacity at too great a cost.

American Poultry Industry.

According to the annual report of the United States Department of Agriculture, there were produced in America in 1912 1,700,000,000 dozen eggs, valued at £70,000,000, while the total value of the product of the hen was stated to be £114,000,000. And yet in the first national egglaying competition held in the States and concluded on the Ist November last the winning pen only laid 160 eggs per hen.

THINGS TO BE REMEMBERED. The male sound in wind has mostly a clear, loud crow without a broken note at the end of it. From a breeding point of view good results can be obtained by feeding the birds on mixed whole grains night and morning. z If eggs containing dead germs have to be tested out at different periods it is obvious something is wrong with the breeding-pens. When breeding for egg-production don’t sacrifice constitutional vigour to maintain some minor quality. Select a male with masculine qualities. The feminine male and the masculine female are undesirables. Desired type, sound constitution, combined with laying-records, is the keynote to breeding profitable stock. Heavy-laying birds must be fed according to their appetite. They eat what they want, and what they want is usually what they need. Always remember that the male bird is more than half of the flock. He should be the son of healthy parents which have a pedigree of . egg-laying performance behind them. There is no better way of forcing the pullet to moult now than to give her a feast to-day and a starvation ration to-morrow. Regular attention is imperative if winter eggs are to be secured.