Poultry-Keeping for Pleasure & Profit; What to Do, and How to Do It (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1910 Excerpt: ...purposes. In eighteen farmyards out of twenty in Essex one can find, he affirms, the greatest mongrels possible, and when fresh blood is introduced it is only a cross-bred male bird. In some districts hundreds of pullets hatched at the end of February, March, and April had not laid an egg up to the middle of November. Where a pure-bred cock is turned down in a farmyard, the pullets usually begin laying when eggs are most in request, when the birds are between six and seven months old, and some even before that age. It is not necessary for farmers and those who merely want eggs and table birds to choose pure breeds for stock: they simply require a separate pure-bred male bird every year for fresh blood. Whilst in the Dedham district the authority whom I have cited called upon Colonel Argozy, who kept about six silver-pencilled Hamburgs in a small stable-yard with nothing but gravel to run on; and it was noticed that this gentleman was getting more co-gs from those six birds than were many of the poultrv-keepers round about with twelve or fifteen mongrels. At one place there were 160 fowls, old and young, which produced about four eggs per week. 66 When he asked the farmer's wife why she did not clear off the old hens, she replied, characteristically, "because the are such good sitters in the Spring." I can endorse the remarks of Mr. Charles Falkner, Goos-trey, near Holmes Chapel--and I like these practical men to speak for themselves: --"The art of poultry-keeping must be studied, theoretically and practically, with the same care and thought as are bestowed upon any other branch of farming. Were one great secret of success asked for, undoubtedly the supply of suitable grit to the birds would be the reply. Hard granite chippings of the size of a...