STIMULANTS FOR POULTRY

Ashburton Guardian, Volume V, Issue 1250, 29 May 1886, Page 3

STIMULANTS FOR POULTRY

Poultry In domestication are not in a natural condition. Their diet is more or lees restricted in variety, anc that which they have is frequently of a character to fatten rather than to promote growth or egg laying. This may be in a measure counteracted by condimental food or stimulants. Before such measures are taken the ponbry raiser should provide everything else necetsary or desirable—grain in variety, biokeu boxes, oyster shells or other form of lime, green food of some kind, cabbage or roots, gravel, and a dry dusting box. Besides, pure water and if milk or butter-milk can be had. a trough for that should be provided. Stimulants must be regarded not as food but as medicine, osed sparingly, and never daily One mess of stimulating food once or twice in three days is enough. Charcoal is with us a stand-by, we think it defends against disease, keeps up the tone of the system, aids digestion, and promotes laying. We feed it powdered, and mix up wheat bran and Indian meal Into this mixture, we find a heaping tablespoonful or powdered Cayenne pepper for a dozen fowls, given every third day, or every second day in a cold snap, and continued for about ten days or two weeks, now and again, promoiive of laying and of health. This soft food may be mixed with hot boiled potatoes and fed either in the morning or at noon. Beside", the hard grain fed at evening regularly, so that the fowls or other poultry may go to rcost with full crops, and a little wheat scattered among leaves or straw to make them scrafch for exercise, they will need little else