The Keeping of Fowls

New Zealand Listener, Volume 7, Issue 158, 3 July 1942, Page 15

The Keeping of Fowls

Dear Aunt Daisy, I was interested in the letter from "Timaruvian" about the keeping of fowls. I have kept a few fowls, on the intensive system, for many years, and on a small town section such as ours, J think there is no other way to compare with it. The fowls are always dry and ‘happy, and so quiet and contented that there is an added pleasure in keeping them. I went to the Government Poultry Expert for advice before keeping them, and got from him the pamphlet "Utility Poultry Keeping," which gives full instructions about the building of the house. My husband made ours-it has a concrete floor covered with earth and with hay (we find that doesn’t break down as much as straw) on top of that. It is entirely cleared out once a year (when we take the fowls to the country with us). It is amazing how much collects on the floor during the year-one year I put ten buckets of fresh soil on the concrete, and when the house was cleared out at the end of the year 80 buckets of material were removed. It is most valuable for the vegetable garden, of course, and in addition there is the very valuable weekly contribution from the dropping-board, which I re-lime each time I clear it, In the eighteen years or so in which I have kept fowls they have only once had something wrong with them — chicken-pox! I had no idea till then that that was a disease of fowls. Another interesting thing I learned when we kept two ducks, once. They laid excellently, quite often three eggs from the two, in a day. The third egg, of course, was always soft shelled, and laid at night. I tried on several occasions to make a sponge cake with the soft-shelled eggs, but it refused to rise. When I asked the poultry expert about the cause of it he

said that although he had never heard of it before, he presumed that the egg had lost its air through having no hard shell. I give my fowls a mash in the morning (a large handful to each fowi) consisting of two parts pollard to one ‘cup of bran, and one tablespoon of meatmeal in the mixture. Household scraps are mixed in with any milk I have left over, or with water. At night they have a large handful of wheat each. And without fail fresh green stuff each morning. My fowls usually don’t touch their mash till they have eaten their green stuff. If I haven’t silver beet or similar material I collect sow thistles (which thcy seem to like best of all) from anywhere I can get it-nasturtium leaves they will take too. But the green stuff seems the most important part of their feed, for fowls kept on the intensive system. The soil on the floor, of course, forms their dust-bath, another thing which keeps them healthy. And I give them grit, or shell from the beach, or charcoal (made simply by putting some small pieces of kindling wood in a round tin with some holes in it and a lid on, and then putting the tin in the fire). They only get that occasionally, I hope "Timaruvian" will have as much pleasure from keeping a few fowls as we have. I have never yet been able to resist going straight away to the fowlhouse if I hear a fowl cackle. A newly laid egg is a peculiarly nice thing to

feel, I always think.-

Takapuna-ite