OUR FEATHERED FRIENDS

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 7, 3 July 1911, Page 3

OUR FEATHERED FRIENDS

j ;!!v ■•('.."k-o'-thc-N'ortll"). I Beforft procecdong with the subject of I feeding, ithere is a matter bearing : vitally

1 ~i -ti.i „o u.al with at I length. There are no doubt some (if I.the poiiltrymen and perhaps others wlio have read of the Hawkesbury College (\M.S.\Y.) competitions, testing the dry apish .system of feeding m against tin- wet mash, and the result was announVed by Mr. Thompson, Xew South Wale-; Ooveniment poultry expert as a. ciu-liing defeat for the drymash system. To use Mr. Thompson's own expression Ihe dry-feeding system proved a fiasco. Mr. Thompson lias never, to my knowledge, used the term "dry masli feeding, !»ut "dry feeding." In the latter term, 'however, he was equally wrong., when applied to the system of feeding tried at llawfcesbury. We are told that there were four poppers placed in each pen filled with Wheat, maize, pollard and meat-meal and brass 1 respectively, and the birds were permitted to help themselves at their own sweet will, and >o were sparrows and mice, if the report is correct. To readers who reau my column, last week "it will be at once apparent that what was treally tried at Hawkesbury College was the, "hopper system." To be quite candid, the dry nm«h system of feeding was never tried at Hawkesbury. not even for five minutes, nor at any other public test. But even had it been the dry mash test, which was on its trial at Hawkesbury, the re-sult would have been of no practical, value to poultrymen, as the test was not a fair one in any sense of i the word. Of course, if Mr._Thbmpson | can assure us that each ;ien of six birds | tested were exactly alike—that is to say, that.they were all capable of laying the same .number of eggsr-the test was worthies*. The only way that reliable data can be obtained from any such test as above is to take, say, as at Hawkes-' bury, 20 pens of six birds each, and then put ten pens on wet mash and ten pen* on dry mash. At the end of the first month put the. wet mash birds on the dry mash and vice versa, and at eaeh month end repeat this. There is not the slightest doubt but what this eonstait changing would militate against the birds laying up to their full capacity, but nil the birds would be "affected alike, and die test would clearly indicate which system of feeding was best. Now at Hawkesbury, if it had been the system of feeding which was at fault, the dry-fed birds would have been'all at the tail of the whole competition, but na a matter of fact the best dry (or hopperl fed pen (Hillerest white Leghorns) laid, if we take the whole competition, 43 <;■:< more than the worst wet-mash fed pen. Again, if we accept their yard mate* who were wet*fe\l, the best hopper-fed birds beat the best wet-mash birds by a few eggs. Now', it is only fair to suppose that each breeder selected his hc4 pen to go under the wetmash feeding system, as most of them believed, in this system of feeding, and therefore the fact of the Hillerest hop-per-fed pen beating the .best of the other gentlemen's pens entered in this test, and which were on wet mash, prove* at once that the birds were superior to the others they beat. We will, however, suppose that it was reallv the ] dry-mash system which was tried* and tnat the birds only hud an average of 147 at Hawkesbury as against 181 for l'ie wet-mash bird?, and that the profit over food for the dry-mash birds was only 7s per bird, as against lis 6d ner '. bird for those fed on wet mash. I a"sk, hao Mr..Thompson on the above figures' ' any right to state that it had proved a ! fiasco. Certainly not. Had'l issued the report I would have declared i<- a huge ' Ricccss as compared with the wet nmsh . for if a person were running, sav, one "ere (even at 400 birds to the acre) and another the same quantity of ground ! stocked to the extent which close confinement and dry-mash feeding cable a ' person to do, he would have 6000 birds ■ which w.,,i!d not require as great an ex-' '. penditure of time and | nbor to f < them as the 400 under the old style and . wet-mash feeding. Sw, the lm ' w ,, Mfl - birds were ted on dry, mash would net i at ,s per bird £2IOO profit for the acre while the other 400 on wet mash would clear.only €230. This being the case, I fad to see how a system of feeding which enables such a tiling as this to be' done can be termed a fiasco. (To bo continued).