POULTRY NOTES.

Motueka Star, Volume III, Issue 119, 3 October 1902, Page 5

POULTRY NOTES.

By “Brahma” in Wanganui Herald. The poultry industry throughout New Zealand is assuming fairly large dimensions, but its dimensions around Wanganui are not nearly great enough. Why here we have two large Freezing Works, reduced railway freights, reliable oversea carriage, and the Govern inent is offering every facility for placing our surplus poultry produce on the extending foreign markets, and we have every opportunity of making Wanganui one of the largest exporting centres in the colony. But at the present time you will find that the great majority of our farmers poultry yards contain nothing but a miserable inbred lot of mongrels, kept for no particular* object except, to lay a tew eggs and, therefore, farmers are not in a position to avail themselves of thei'* opportuni ties ; but let our poultry keepers who have the convenience launch out, get rid of your mongrels give the purebred or purebred cross a cliance , they don’t cost any more to keep, and very little more to get. Breed vith a particular object in view, and don’t think that because your neighbour says fowls don’t pay that you can’t make them pay. Bet the reader take a walk around the back yards of those persons who declare their poultry does not pay to keep, and what will he find ? about thirty or forty fowls crammed into a niece of ground not large enough to turn around in. Bet us examine the water trough, a wooden one probably, with water two or three days old in it, and the ground hard as a beaten track, here and there a sickly fowl moping about, and the rest of the flock sitting around the gate waiting to be ted. Tneu let us visit the fowl-house, which will usually show any experienced poultry-fancier what a person is at poultry keeping. Can anyone wonder under such circumstances that fowls would not pay to keep ? No, certainly not, and, with the object of assisting readers, Igive the following hints. Bet your poultry roosts be not higher than eighteen inches from the ground. Remember if you have valuable eockrels that humble-foot is caused by the fowls jumping down from high perches. Bor a pen of (8) eight fowls a well sheltered pen of 50ft by 50ft should be prov ded. It should be formed of wire netting, from six to eight feet high,accoiding to the breed of fowls kept, light breeds should have the highest wire.

I cannot impress too deeply the necessity of giving the poultry houses a good coat of limewash ; slosh it on, don’t give vermin a chance to accumulate. For the outside walls the following is a good cheap paint:—2olbs of whiting, gib of common glue, one quart of boiled linseed oil ; add sufPeient water to the whiting and break the mixture well into a batter, then add the glue while hot. Finally add the oil and mix altogether thoroughly. It must be applied warm. The fertility of an egg usually fails about the seventh day after the cock bird has been removed from the pen. Of course a great deal depends on the surrounding circumstances (weather, etc.), but it is usually about the seventh day. Several persons have complained that during this cad weather they have lost nearly all their early chicks, although they have kept them locked up in a shed away from the weather. New, that is just .vhere the mistake is made in coddling chicks ; providing they come from good strong stock, and are well hatched and the hen is placed in a momy coop, in a dry sheltered spot so that the chicks can come and go at leisure, they will do very well. A barrow full of stable manure tipped near the chicken coops, brings the chicks along famously; they find abundance of insects and it is warm for their feet to scratch in. Many poultry-keepers, if they find a chick slow in breaking from the shell, usually meddle with it, pick off' the shell and endeavor to assist the chicken out. I find that in the majority of cases the chickeu will barely live long enough to thank you for the operation. If it is unable to break through itself, you will find that though you may help it out alive, it will die before many days. I do not approve of what is known as the ladder roost in fowl-houses ; perches should he half round sapling if procurable and portable, so that they can be removed occasionally and cleaned. Ladder roosts are used more in Australia, where foves are very prevalent.