THE POULTRY YARD.

Globe, Volume XXII, Issue 1939, 12 May 1880, Page 3

THE POULTRY YARD.

FATTENING FOWLS. It is agreed on all hands that poultry can bo fattened more cheaply and better in the dark than in the light. It is of great importance to send only fat and good poultry to market, as it brings a much hotter price. The most successful plan is to put the fowls in a small enclosure, which can be covered with old sacks, or in some way made quite dark. Use ground barley or ground corn, whichever is comparatively the cheapest. If the meal is cooked and mixed with mashed boiled potatoes, the birds will fatten much more quickly. A large iron kettle over a fire-place is a valuable adjunct to any farm, for cooking refuse vegetables and grain for cattle, pigs or chickens. If possible, therefore, give cooked food four times a day, using a clean trough and removing the old to be rinsed out. Give the imprisoned birds ground barley in their drinking water also. In two weeks’ time the fowls will be as fat as they can be made, and may be sent to market. NTTMBKB OP EQ93 A HBN CAN LAY. The ovarium of a hen is believed to contain 600 ovules or eggs, and a hen cannot compass more than that number of eggs in her lifetime—particularly if she is killed before she gets through with her contract. It take about nine years for a hen to hand over for domestic use the 600 eggs she starts business with, and she carries out her contract, as far as can bo ascertained, as under. Hens are naturally reticent, and except when they have laid an egg they say little about their own concerns :—First year after birth, 16 to 20 ; second, 100 to 120; third, 120 to 135 ; fourth, 100 to 115 ; fifth, 60 to 80 ; sixth, 50 to 60 ; seventh, 35 to 40; eighth, 15 to 20 ; ninth, 1 to 10. After the fourth or -fifth year it does not pay to keep a hen for laying, and as it would-be inconvenient and expensive to use a circular saw for carving her, she will hardly do for the table after that age.