OUR FEATHERED FRIENDS

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 267, 1 April 1911, Page 3

OUR FEATHERED FRIENDS

(By -Cock-o'-the-North"). ' How many poullrymen or farmers attach any importance to the fowlhouse [beyond giving the birds somewhere to huddle in from the rain.and storm at night. To anyone who is really a lover of good poultry it would pass their understanding if they saw some of the awful places it has been my misfortune to see and which were dignified by the name of fowlliousc ("foul"-housc would be a fur more suitable term to apply to many of them. Some ten years u :k I began to wonder wbv it was that tllosV - v 'ho brought out various kinds of fowlhouse;. for adoption among poultry farmers always confined themselves to altering theshapv. f 'f the roof or raised the walls or something ->f that nature, entirely missing the great aim of all successful modern industries, viz., laborsaving machinery. I looked about through journals and by travelling and saw the cropping farmer, instead of having to walk thirty miles to plough a four-acre paddock, do the work in some places without walking at all, and in less than half an hour. I saw what many farmers in Taranaki will hear me out in, viz.. farmers who after slaving all the weekmilking, cleaning, driving cows in through slush, etc., often up to their knees, churning, weighing, packing ,etc., of their butter, plod their weary way into town once or twice weekly and timidly ask the grocer or .merchant what he would give them for the butter, and when'he had guaranteed the butter well made, clean, sweet, etc., lie was often offered the generous price of 44. or 5d per lb, on condition that he took a certain portion out in store. I saw that same farmer in a to say, "Here is our butter. Tlic price is so much, and the grocer, bowing to his former slave, paid the price without a murmur and without any request to take it out." Why this great change? Labor-saving, machinery did it all. The cropping farmer, by the help of double, treble, quadruple and more furrowed ploughs, reapers and binders and countless other appliances found his output vastly increased and his expenses for labor! so greatly decreased that where he formerly existed in a state of hand-to-mouthriess he now lives in comparative ease And comfort. Did this great increase bring the price of grain down in New Zealand? I think we poultrymen know differently to that. Did the'farmer who adopted these labor-saving devices succeed? Walk through any country district, and when you sec a dilapidated looking hou.se and outbuildings on a grain-growing farm! you will see mighty few labor-saving implements in those same outbuildings, and •when you see a fine, comfortable looking house you will usually see ft good assortment of these same implements.

The same thing applies to dairy farmers. What is it that enables him to-day to stand so independent, often dictating to the (iovefnmcnt what should he done and how it should he done?_ Why, milkin;; machines, separators, dairy factories, and Farmers' Unions. In other words, Progress and Combination. What a lesson to Taranaki poultrymen if they will only heed it and wake up! Going on these lines, I began to wonder if there were not, a possibility of devising some labor-saving devices which would do for the poultry farmer the equivalent to what the above inventions have done for the cropping and dairy farmer. After some two years or so of wondering, I began, in a blundering way at first, to try and devise sometning which would do the work and do it as well (or better) than the poultryman was doing by hand. I devised nianv and condemned, them all, for t was working to groat' dlsadHntag* when compared'w:...' the'inventors of other agricultural implements, as these latter are costly though economical when one knows what they save, but in my e«J!C I knew perfectly well that any appliances devised for the poultry industry must be cheap as well as effective, as the g,reat majority of persons starting in this line are persons of small capital, tq whom one pound means twenty shillings. However. I fully succeeded at. last, and in June, 1907, I erected on the property occupied by a Mr. R. Haycock, of Gisborne, the" first house of its sort ever erected in the world, and which was fully , ■' reported in the Poverty Bay Herald of that month (I forget the exact <late).| Very shortly I vastly improved the | house in simplicity and effectiveness.: About, this time I was appointed associ-; ate-editor, etc., of the New Zealand Poultry Journal, and announced in its columns the house and its capabilities. I was certain that New Zealand poultrymen would" hail with delight an invention such as I had suceeded in bringing out, but they, did nothing of the sort, but' they certainly did hail me as a lunatic or next door to it when I announced what one person could do in the line of caring for a large number of fowls singlehanded. (To be continued next week).

JOTTINGS. | All pullets hatched at the right time should be on the point of, if not actually, laying. Tf not already done, they should be' culled out by some good system of selection. If a heavy layer costs 0s to feed yearly, so will a wa'slcr, with this difference, that the good layer will probably return at least Ss profit over the cost of food, but if the waster is kept the profit at the year's end, after paying labor, interest, freight, depreciation, etc., will be one shilling per bird, whereas by selling the waster for, say, Is Od the profit would be 0s fid on one bird. A few cases like this would soon pay for a good system of, selection. If not already done, disinfect all incubators, brooders, etc., used last season, and in respect to the latter, be very careful if lime-washing to do so very lightly, as heavy whitewashing is_ responsible for many deaths among chicks.