BONEMEAL FOR FOWLS.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 6, Issue 1739, 18 July 1884, Page 2

BONEMEAL FOR FOWLS.

Boncmeal is a valuable addition to soft food, and for chickens it should be used regularly, From the last part of the popular edition of Wright's "Book of Poultry" (Cassell and Co) just out, wo extract the following:-" Bonedust for making in poultry food should be about the fineness of fine oatmeal. There are usually largo* pieces interspersed, but these need taken out. as any too large will be though the meal may be sifted from any larger than peas if desired. The price never being much more per cent than good meal, it should be used liberally with all the salt food, and about an ounce may be mixed with every half-pint of dry meal before adding the milk or water. In small yards J out grass may bo liberally supplied as well to the mixture; and on such food the birds will grow wonderfully and acquire a constitution which in confinement wc have never been able to attain in any other way. We may say that burnt' bones ponnded baye not by any nuans the same effect, being reduced to mere prospborato of lime with some amount of animal charcoal; neither have crushed raw bouts, which have been stated by some to produce similar results. On the contrary, raw bones have been proved by the simple test of experiment to hasten laying in the pullet and • furnishing' or feathering out to maturity in the cockerels, as might be expected from the amount of fresh jelly they contain; hence, whilst excellent in moderation for laying stock or during a limited timo to prepare cockerels for actual exhibition they aro not adapted for the regular food of chickens whose period of maturity tho breeder for exhibition rather desires to post- ! pone, That this postponement, and with i continuous growth, is affected by tho dryV bonemeal, we have most fully proved ; and in the case of weakly breeds, which have it for its strengthening power, but which it is not wished to increase in size, the changing it, at the proper time, for raw bones will produce all the desired effects. We have often proved the value of bonemeal, both in the rearing of laying and exhibition but it is better not to use it for those intended to bo killed for the table, as we do not want in them to dovelop bone."