Farm and Garden

King Country Chronicle, Volume IV, Issue 251, 16 April 1910, Page 3

Farm and Garden

FEEDING FOWLS. Fowls in high condition should in plumage look like pheasants and partridges close, firm feathered, and bright-eyed, and sharp in search of food. As they are not brought up to seek their food entirely and as every place doe* not afford it, they require some help, but this should be sparingly given. A fowl that is fed as long as it can pick up a morsel, three times a day, is in reality being fattened. It is being spoiled as a stock fowl, and two thirds of the food is wasted. All poultry, by nature, are clever at seeking food, and nothing sharpens the instinct as much as necessity. If fowls are to be kept healthy they should be kept hungry sufficiently so to make them watch anyone who intrudes on their haunts, to see if they bring them food; and when any is thrown down there should be a race among them to pick it up, and if they will not run for it, they do not want it. The properly-fed fowl will seek food by turning over dead leaves, scratching every inch of soil, and scanning every blade of grass with the eye of an epicure. Fowls, to do well, should be in the same condition as the greyhound trained for running—full of hard muscle, and with eyes bright and prominent, but to a casual observer, rather thin. When there is no visible cause for the refusal of food, it is because the fowls are overfed. Instead of tempting with more, withhold all feeding until they meet you at the door in the morning. "No fowls are healthy unless they are hungry." "No fowls should be fed unless they flock around the feeder, and jump to the vessel that holds the meal." Let these two quotations be impressed on the minds of all those who keep fowls, and let them be followed, and there will be no cause to complain of lack of health. GETTING GOOD LAYERS. One secret of getting a good profit from poultry, as well as cows, is the weeding out of the unprofitable ones, writes one poultryman. A good many recommend the trap-nest. Some claim that the trap-nest to the average farmer is about as practicable as would be a line of trolley-cars to carry him around his farm. In order to trapnest a flock of hens, an attendant must be on hand to release the hen after she has laid, and give her credit on the books. A farmer cannot always do this. A set of trap-nests is all right in its place, and that place is where hens are kept in sufficient numbers; so an attendant is continually about the hen-houses up to three or four o'clock in the afternoon. How, then, are we to judge which are the layers and which are the drones? My method is to judge by their looks and actions. There is much difference in the shape, disposition, and appearance of individual hens as there is in individual cows or horses. The difference in characteristics can better be judged in purebred flocks than in flocks of mongrels, for with the former, when you have studied the breed you have adopted, as everyone should, until you have the shape imaged in your head, and can recognise it anywhere, you have more uniform individuals to judge; while, with mongrels and crosses, after the first cross especially, you never know what you are going to get either in shape, colour, eyes, comb, or general characteristic. A hen that is soonest off the roost in the morning, and the last to retire at night, is what we call a hustler. She'is looking for something to eat from which to produce an egg. A hen, to produce eggs in large quantities, must have good capacity to take food and good digestive organs to digest and assimilate the food eaten. You naturally, therefore, look for a long keel, apparently lengthened by a full breast, filled out square with the keel by a good full crop. In such a hen the abdomen, while not bagging

down much, will be well distended, showing egg capacity. You seldom see a hen narrow between the l'!gs and abdominal lines straight back from the legs, giving her a squeezed-in appearance from behind, that is a heavy producer. She is like a dairy cow built on beef lines. I prefer a hen with legs well apart, full-breasted, with well-developed abdomen. This indicates stamina and vigour.