Farm Notes

Te Aroha News, Volume XXVII, Issue 43333, 4 June 1908, Page 1

Farm Notes

- AN • TREATMENT. Ai/rftouaE: ; egg - eating amongst poultry cannot rightly be termed a disease, it is a vice very easily acquired and most-difficult to cure, causing loss and . annoyance to poultry-keepers, the majority of whom have to deal with it at some time or other. • Egg-eating is frequently the direct result of carelessness, ignorance, or Ueglect on the part of the this being especially the case when the fowls are confined in limited runs.

Lack of shell-forming material, such as lime and grit, the accidental breaking of an egg in the nest, soft eggs being laid about the yard, and given the fowls broken egg shells to eat, are all items tending towards the acquirement of thß habit, which can frequently be traced to. either one or the other.

In feeding green bone to fowls, probably ah ounce for each fowl ‘ is as large a feed as can be given with safety, and this much only when the fowls ard accustomed to it. A poultry breeder in a Wellington suburb ‘sold eleven young Golden Wyandotte cockerels the other day, the average live weight being 61b. He received 8d a lb. live weight, so that his cheque amounted to £2 2s'4J, » 3a 10£d per bird. One seven ninths’ old cockerel weighed B£lbs., vjjid so made 5s Bd. In pollard or soft food, never giyelt sloppy. Make it moist and crumbly, but never have it sticky or very soft. When thrown down it should break into small pieces. Never mix more at one time than is required for one meal, as it is apt to go sour, and cause diarrhoea and other complications.

Good results cannot continually follow haphazard or non - skilful mating, Whether that mating be with related 61/ unrelated stock. Are the birds fit : .fo be mated? If they arc, the chances for getting the desired qualities in the progeny will be better if the birds are related than they? would be were they unrelated and hot fit.