POULTRY NOTES.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXIII, Issue 4448, 2 August 1922, Page 2

POULTRY NOTES.

Light and sunshine in the breeding pens are highly important conditions for securing the best hatching results. Birds kept, in dark houses will pever give as good results as those-fkept ? n open front, well ventilated, and wet 1 lighted pens.

Liver trouble is a common complaint among poultry tPwards the end of winter, resulting from heavy feeding, inactivity, and a lack of green feed. Watch the colour of th© droppings, and if any are noticed of a light yellow or green colour do not wait for other symptoms, but give all the fowls a good dose of Epjom salts.

All kerosene flames creep up when the burners get hot. When the flame is turned high always return in half an hour or so to be sure that the lamp is not smoking. Ther;e is practically no danger of fire in the modern incubator. but a smoking lamp will clog t'he heat pipes with soot, interfering with the radiation of heat, .and the flame will soon go out, usually ruining the hatch. About the tenth day the regulator should be adjusted ’.o take care of the animal heat, which will begin to manifest itself about this time. Do not, attempt to take care of this excess heat by reducing the flame. That is not the right way to de it.

What should be t'he first feed for chicks is a frequent question. The chick is attracted by anything that glistens. Rolled oats catch the eye, are easily digestible, and may serve as a good initial' feed about two days after ’.he chicks are hatched. For the remainder of the first week rolled oats may be fed twice daily. In addition any good commercial scratch feed may be given three times dai yIt must be borne in mind, however, that ihe hungry chicks are the healthy ones, and in no instance should they be given more feed thap they will clean up in a single feeding. Many complaints about white diarrhoea during the first ten days under the brooder are often not true cases of bacillary white diarrhoea at all, the ailment being a simply diarrhoea, due to over-feeding.

One of America’s most successful poultrymen, in dealing with testing birds, in an article in the Reliable Poultry Journal, states : *‘ From close observation I have come to prefer a fair thickness of the pelvis bone, but not thicker than .an eighth to threesixteenths pi] an inch, and I do not pay any attention to the distance between the pelvis bones. This width, in my opinion, is governed largely by the size of the egg more than hy the individual bird. As before stated, when it comes to the matter of the thickness of the pelvis bones I prefer those that are not too thin. I prefer an eighth of an inch or wider rather than one-sixteenth of an inch, as some recommend. When a bird comes out of production she may put gristle on this pelvis bone, and it jnay be as thick as one-fourth of an inch, but to me it does not seem reasonable that points as fine drawn as this actually govern the egg-production of a fowl. However, in my judgment a bird must have width arid depth in the section where she ripens the eggs in order to keep one coming each day that will average to weigh 23 ounces or better to the dozen.”