POULTRY NOTES.

King Country Chronicle, Volume VII, Issue 552, 22 March 1913, Page 2

POULTRY NOTES.

■; o FEATHER EATING. This is even worse than egg eating. Birds confined in small miserable yards and lacking a'.'variety of foods, especially animal food and vegetables, will pluck the small juicy feathers out of their companion's body. The best way to cure this habit ia to hang a boiled rabbit or raw sheep's liver up just out of the bird's reach, and Jet them jump for it. ' This will supply them with the food which, in the moulting season, is very necessary to feather making. It will at the same time keep them active. FEEDING POULTRY. It is probable that the hens have the most influance on the vital powers; that is, so far as the organs of nutrition and production are concerned; In acturl experience it has been found that form, size, and constitution should all be found in the hens;; otherwise they should be rejected as breeders. As a general rule most attention is paid to the rooster, on the basis "that he is half the pen." So he is; but he is not all the pen, and this is where a lot of young bre ders go wrong. The rooster should be chosen for; type, ' gait, father, and generally fine get up. A bird that fills the bill in all these important respects only comes along now and again, and his union with good hens will-be productive of the very best progeny; for the hens will be attracted to him. The female instinct is universally in favour of the handsome male; it is just nature at work; and the utmost harmony will revail in a pen which is headed by a beautiful rooster, and the offspring will be of the best. Equallv important 'as the selection of the rooster is the choosing of the heno. They must be big feeders, of good size and shape, layers of perfect shelled eggs, free from deformity of any sort —in short, as perfect in their sex as the rooster ia representative o'f his.

THE AMATEUR POULTRYMAN. The best way for the new chum to start in is to buy a rooater and a couple of henn. Go to some reputable breeder and tell him what you want. Buy the trio, and hatch as many chicks as possible. Small Buff Orpington hens are good, mothers, so are White and Silver Wyandottes, and the good old barndoor also knows ths game. You can buy a good trio for from 15s to 21s each. If you start with eggs you may buy a dozen for a guinea; but you will have to wait six months before you know what you have got hold of; and, supposing they ail hatch, you will only have a dozen chicks, anyhow. By paying £3 3s for a trio you can hatch out 100 chicks in a season; and so it is better business than buying eggs. If you prefer it you can buy chicks already hatched for you, but very few of the known men will sell /chicks, preferring to keep and sell them as adult birds. You can go nn for two or three seasons with hires mated up by an experienced man, and backed with a known name the chickens you raise will be salable at « fair price. Don't buy from anybody. If .you are periously going in for poultry there is only one sort to buy, and that is the best. You must expect to pay fair money for a good article, so don't buy fowls because they ar* cheap. Select your man, and he will put you right, and so long as he treats you right go back to him if you want a bird; don't chop and change about. For a beginner—or anyone else for the matter of that —one breed is quite enough. As layers pure and simple the wh'te Leghorns are what you want; aa allround breeds, the Silver and Whice Wyandottes and Buff and Black Orpingtons are altogether the best to have about the place.

THE COLOUR OF EGGS. The colour of the yolk and white of the egg, and the effect of feed on the same, has been a contention among authorities for yeare. The yellow colouring matter has been studied in the laboratpry of the North Carolina Experimental Station, and ia related to the colouring matter also of animal origin, called lutein. The pale yolked eggs are considered inferior by housekeepers, ss a given number impart to cake or custard less of the yellow colour, which is looked upon as an indication of richness, than would eggs with a darker yolk. The cause of pale yolks is not known with certainty, but, as has been pointed out by Professor W, P. Wheeler, of the New York State Experiment Station, the eggs laid by hens fed only on certain grains and animal feeds generally have this characteristic; while adding to the ration a liberal amount of fresh or dried feed on the colour of the yolks is illustrated by a test at the New York Experment Station, in which four lots of hens were fed alike, except that no hay or green feed was given to one lot, while the other three lots had different amounts of clover hay alternating with green alfalfa. The depth of colour of the yolk varied in the different lots, and was directly proriortional to the amount of clover and alfalfa fed. It is perhaps possible that the colouring bodies or other materials containing iron present in the green feed have an effect upon the yellow colouring matter of egg yolk, but, whatever the reason, it seems, from the New York work cited, that the poultry raiser who desires eggs with deeply coloured yolks can ontain them by feeding an abundance of such green materials as those indicated.

The egg yvhifce also varies somewhat in shade, having a more or less pronounced greenish cask before cooking, and corrseponding variations when cooked. That the colour of the egg whits varies more or less with different rations was noted in the New York experiments cited, but there was little uniformity in this respect. _There is a belief that the cooked whites of eggs with shells of like tint will matcn in colour, and that the albumen of white shelled eggs is decidedly whiter when cooked than that of eggs with tinted shells.

ference so far that we will refuse an egg on account of the colour of the white, yet it is stated on goo r ! authority that in first-class hotels and restaurants, where great attention is paid to details, it has been found that the boiled eggs served must match in colour. If, when taken from the shell, one is greenish white and the other clear white the eggs are often objected to on the ground that one of them is not of the required standard of excellence. A large number of analyses of eggs have been reported, but no differences have been noted in composition which correspond to variations in colour, though it is not un likely that there are some differences in flavour, and that the deep yellow yolks have a more pronounced flavour than the pale.