OUR FEATHERED FRIENDS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 12, 8 July 1911, Page 3

OUR FEATHERED FRIENDS.

(Bv "Cock-o'-the-North "). As 1 said on June 24, the man drinking a little tea, witter or milk with each mouthful of food is a far dearer workman to his employer than another us described, for iby preventing the proper digestion of lus food (as explained in my last article on this subject) lie has to eat a great deal more to keep up the same standard of work. So with the pullet. If fed under the moist mash she will lay just as well but at a greater expenditure for food. There are many who have tried the dry mash feeding who would deny tins altogether, and say the dry-fed birds cat as much or even more than those fed on the wet mash, but this is due to defective methods in feeding this mash, by allowing thousands of small birds to take toll of the feed, and if the amount eaten by these were possible of record it would astonish the poultry man and farmer. One evening in Hawke's Bay before I was able to get my birds under the conditions I prefer to keep them, I went and fed my fowls (180) in the open. It was winter, and usually my children or myself had to try and keep the sparrows off till the fowls, had eaten up most of the grain, but on one particular evening I left them alone for the sake of obtaining some reliable data as to the loss from this source. When the feeding was quite done, I stood ready with a gun, and when some of the sparrows flew up to the top of the wirenetting fence prior to going, I shot three. I opened the crops and they contained 27, 30 and 31 grains of wheat respectively. There must have .been fully 2000 sparrows down, so that some 21,000 or 28,000 grains of wheat must have been lost, and this meant that the poultry man feeding in this way during the winter months would lose from 150,000 to 300,000 grains of wheat in ten I days by sparrows alone. I for one object to this, and I can,assure my readers that if sparrows had to dep'end on me for a living during winter there would soon be no sparrows in New Zealand.

Now for the second objection— waste of time. A man with 800 layers would take fully three hours to measure out,, and mix and feed properly a moist mash j for these birds. Now what does he add to the mash for the time expended, besides boiler fuel, etc. Why, water pure and simple, and nothing else. "Oh!" I fancy some reader may say; '-'what rot! What about the rich-soup I mi.v my mash with?" Well, my learned friend, just ask yourself this'question: Do you get this soup from ingredients imparted to the water by the meat you boil, or from the water you boil the meat in? If from the meat, why not chop the meat up and feed it to the birds, or hang it up and let the birds help themselves? Is not the meat just as healthy and digestible raw as cooked, and more so, and would you not be feeding the same amount of eggforming material in a far less laborious manner? "Yes," some one else will say, "but I give mine milk with their mash'." All right; is there anything the matter with giving them the milk to drink, and will it not do them just as much good? "Oh, yes," another moist-mash advocate says, "but see how they like it!" Just that; but have you ever seen how the A boozer relishes the beer or whisky, and how he smacks his lips over the drink, and how fond the methylated spirits, opium or morphine or laudunum drinkers are of their favorite drugs? Docs it follow that because they like it. bo well that it is good for them? Not much. You must try again, and find some stronger agilments than these. In respect to the third objectionwaste in useless labor—the same reasoning as above applies. There is not a single egg gained. You do not have better birds, or better fertility, or healthier birds. If this is so what is the aim of all this work? What is to be gained by it? Why is it done? Ah! echo answers why? Some do it because others do; others because their grandmothers did; and still others because they know of no other method. Well, in my ■humble way. I will try to teach them others, and then at least they will not be able to plead ignorance. In respect to the last * objection, liss in health, this does not apply so much to small as to large plants, ' If a man has, say. 800 birds to feed, divided into flocks of, say, 30 in a run, he will have 2(1 pens to enter, 26 gates to open and 20 gates to shut, and so on. Now, take a. bitterly cold, blustery morning dn winter. The fowls get off the porch ravenously hungry, but they must wait ' till their lord and master comes with the mash. Now, if he feed any way properly, it will take him at least five minutes per run, so that by the time the last pen is fed they have* been waiting, faint, from want of food, for two hours. Again, at night, when feeding grain by hand, the first pen is either fed too early or the last pen too late, and so on. Now all this cannot be conducive to perfect health and condition, two things which must be present in a heavy layer; hence loss in health.