POULTRY NOTES

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVII, Issue 180, 1 July 1937, Page 15

POULTRY NOTES

(By “Brooder.”) Breeding time comes again. How many or how few will be reared this year ? Beginners especially should, right from the start, i"ali.se that quantity never makes up for quality. There is to-day more than ever a lot of haphazard breeding going on just to get numbers, with the result that the general average of quality in Hocks is being seriously lowered. Thus is many a young enthusiast lost to the industry. He may buy chicks regardless of guarantee and largely on recommendation. When reared they may be far short ol the stamp of bird he had hoped to possess. Again, without experience he may try his Kind at breeding and rearing his own stock and probably has even worse luck. All this ctnnes from insufficient care being taken to avoid reproduction of undesirable birds. What follows? Everywhere we sec undersized birds, many of which are prone to disease, and which cn.ii never be anything but a loss to the owner. A word ol warning to beginners is therefore not out ol place. .Speaking of pedigree hatching. AY. tY . Linutviy says:— J lie principal objects ol pedigree hatching are to prove any sire as a producer ot layers; to ascertain if any hen, already proved (by single-testing) as a layer, has the power io transmit those laying qualities to her progeny; as a test oil whether .any quality, either good or bad, is being transmuted to the chicks from either the dam or sire; and lor identification purposes. Pedigree hatching is the means that has been adopted to produce the present-dav commercial layer from the old original jungle fowl; to produce a lien capable ot laying nearly an egg a day, from stock that laid one or two settings ol about iilteen eggs each ill a year; and to produce the magnificent specimens that are to be seen to-day on our show benches. When it is realised that till this has been achieved, it can scarcely .-.in tun. r 11v>n impress upon poultryfarmers the importance and necessity j. ..u.giee ha.ehing on the commercial farm of to-day. Apart from the my dig aspect, there is Health, vigour and resistance to disease to consider; and it is very probable that had this phase ot poultry farming been curried out in its entirety on all commercial poultrv farms disease would not bo the problem that it is today. Note the emphasis on health, vigour and resistance to disease, it is probable that few go in for pedigree hatching, but there are also some who have no very definite methods ol selection, with health, etc., always of first importance. /

WERE CHICKS STARVED? A correspondent in Poultry states that he received 100 fine healthy chicks cm June J. 10:37, and that "’hen he went to give them their first feed on June J twelve were dead, the total losses ultimately being 5-L From that if seems that he gave the chicks nothing to eat until they had been three da vs in his possession. The chicks most probably already had been out of the shell for .a day or two before ho received them; thus they were probably starved tor five days before being offered their first feed. T am not surprised, says a critic, under such circumstances, that twelve of them were dead when he went to give them this belated first feed; neither o.m I surprised that o-l out of the 100 sujisequentlv died, and I shall be surprised if any'of the 100 are reared to worthwhile' maturity. It is true that many chicks .arc lost Leon use of too early feeding, but not many who know anything at all about rearing chicks would dream of a.llovyin.r them to wait five days for their first meal. Thirty-six hours would he about the limit, which gives ample time for the chick to absorb and digest the lust meal (the yoke of the egg) ere it left the shell.