The Poultry Yard

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 756, 31 August 1929, Page 36

The Poultry Yard

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GEO. H. AMBLER.)

GIVE YOUR STOCK A CHANGE

WK all like a change. Lt does us good. The life of all live things in Nature is full of changes. It will certainly do your fowls good if you give them an occasional change.

When f see poultry kept under I super-ideal conditions i have a feel- ! ing of sympathy for the birds. When I hear that they are fed on a strictly weighed quantity of food, containing ; the correct proportion of albuminoids I and carbohydrates, auu are subject to ; a vigilant supervision over vitamines and soluble fats. I feel that it would I have been better for the birds to have died in shell, or, at least, to have been allowed to run wild and forage their food wherever they could. T would ask you to try and visualise things with the eye of a heu. Supposing that you had beeu bred and i reared scientifically, and had even managed to reach adult age—for Na- ! ture does beat the scientist some- | times! WHY SHOULD BIRDS MOPE? You are housed and clothed perfectly. and every requirement supplied by your assiduous master. Your liberty is slightly curtailed, but you are scientifically fed so that you have the correct amount of nutrition to keep you perfectly fit, never being hungry, and never having too much to eai. 1 cannot go on with it. The subject is too appalling. It seems j that 1 am describing the Complete l Mental Asylum, and I am quite cer-1 tain chat treatment such as T have de- i i scribed would speedily drive any sane man into one! No! Do not, let your fowls mope away their lives. Pay a heed to textbook teaching by all means, but do i not. take it too much to heart. We all know that, maize or barley are not as good poultry foods as wheat or oats, just, as we know that, for us, roast pork with apple sauce is not the ideal I luuch from a medical point of view. Bully-beef with biscuits is a far better 1 food than roast pork. WHICH DO YOU PREFER Oats is a much better food than , maize. Which do your hens prefer ? i ; They will cat oats when they are | hungry, and thrive on it, as our sol- j diers thrived on bully scraps, etc., that, most poultry-keepers use. that a j scries of decided changes may be j | given. ' Green food is simply green food ' to the poultry-keeper, but I fancy that i even a. fowl can discriminate between, j : say, boiled spinach and a raw cab- i 1 bage. In these days of prolific vege- i

table crops, almost everyone may find a large number of changes for the hot-pot in his garden, which may safely be given in addition to- the usual green food, and wheat may also be occasionally cooked with great advantage. A periodical change from meat-meal to cooked butcher’s scraps is a great treat. A CHANGE OF OUTLOOK The fowls should also have a change of ouliook on life. The farmer's mongrels are generally well off in this respect, for they can wander of their own sweet will. No charge of causing fowl ennui can be laid against the general farmer who uses portable houses, or the poul-try-farmer who has large pens with comparatively few birds in each. The back-yarder is often a bad offender in this particular. I have seen some hundreds of backyard pens, and while there are many that are a. great credit to the owner, there are far too many the condition of which, to say the least, must inflict a real hardship on the spirits of the birds. A house apparently designed for a hen-gaol is too often seen, with a long, narrow, hard-floored run, where the prisoners are allowed out for exercise. I know the troubles and difficulties of the backyarder, and all credit to him for keeping fowls at all, and showing, as he so often does, a good profit. Rut let him ask himself whether it would not be possible to brighten the fowls’ existence. Perhaps it would meet the case to double the size of the fowlhouse, or to halve the number of hens. In any case, if you cannot kee;t the run sweet do away with it altogether, and let your hens have the largest house your space (and money) will allow. Have it knee-deep in straw, with watertrough and grit-hopper on shelves. You must use a dropping-board, and then your litter will last for months. Have all the front of the house open in day-time, and allow for plenty of ventilation at night, then your hens will never mope, but. working away in the straw (incidentally keeping

themselves beautifully clean), will present a charming picture to yourself and your neighbours. I would venture to say that more people have given up poultry-keeping on account of seeing their birds moping than for any other reason, for whilst nothing looks better in the eyes of a poultry-keeper than active, busy fowls, nothing could possibly be worse, to owner and outsider alike, than the doleful appearance of a pen of fed-up, tired-ot'-existence, moping fowls. SOME CAUSES OF HATCHING FAILURES Apart from defective hatching appliances, or restless hens, it can only be concluded that failures in hatching are due to some faulty condition of the eggs, arising from various causes. When eggs are infertile we may be sure that the stock birds are at fault, and if the infertility is general it is safe to assume that the male is inactive, whereas if 50 or 60 per cent, of the eggs are strongly fertilised it is probable that the remaining failures are due to certain females being out of condition for breeding, and this is more likely to be the case when pullets are used in the breediug pen. There are, however, other direct causes for hatching failures, one being the storage of eggs for too long a time, or in too low a temperature, before they are set. The longer eggs are kept the more they deteriorate as regards hatchabllity, while the tem- | perature for storage should not be below 50 degrees. Failures from this cause are more marked in incubators tbau with hens, and the same applies to eggs that have undergone rough handling in transit, or have travelled a long distance. In short, provided eggs are well fertilised, hatching success can be assured by setting them while they are fresh and without exposing them to any more handling or movement than is necessary. Apart from that, care must be taken in selecting for hatching only such eggs as are of good shape and normal size, free from marks or excrescences, with smooth shells, and coming from well-matured stock.