The Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette.
Dorchester, Dorset, England, 1861-04-30 00:00:00

ttanculturt.

POULTRY.

Strung beer is recommended as the best remedy fey
cr•riiii.
Meal or stale bread soaked in beer should be given to
fuu Is in very cold seather.
Avoid the use of bri.rk or stone floors for poultry
houses. According to some, nothing produces crauip
so quickly an cold bard floor.
Linswil-meal has been found to be • great promoter
of egg-laying. Nixed with scalded meal or short, or
with sour milk, it is readily eaten, and is a good
substitute for animal food and insects.
M. de Sore, in his bennery, near Paris wintered in
1858, 100,000 hens, and a fair proportion of male birds.
The produce in eggs of 300 hens averaged each 25 down
in the year. He plaints great reliance in • mixture of
raw udneemeat with the other food.
. . . .

A judicious rotation of food produces the best
results in egg-laying. No single food, however nutritious,
will make the hens lay well unless worms or insects
are obtainable by them, or animal food is given. When
these cannot be had, ealeareous inatter,—pounded
oyster-shells,—to assist in the making of the shells of
eggs, must also be given to them.
Mashed potatoes mixed with bran we have found an
excellent f3od. Barley, ground down whole, mashed
with a little beanmeal and bran, has been little inferior
to any food we have ewer tried. Green food, as lettuce,
cabbage-leaves, S.A. Ike., is also promotive of laying.
Variety of food, and regularity in giving it must also
be attended to, or bad results will inevitably follow.
Do You WANT EGOS IN WINTLIO—Then give the
manufacturers materials to make them with, and • com-
fortable place to work in. Let the oarless say what
they will, we speak what we know, when we assert that
it is perfectly feasible to keep the bens laying all winter.
Give them animal food to supply the place of the insecte
they catch in summer, and then let them have • warm
place to ran into, with plenty of unfrozen water, not
snow, and a frequent taste of green food such as cabbage
leaves, potatoes, Aix, and remember to supply some
gravel for their grinding-mill, and lime to make shells
out of, and we will warrant the animals to ropey all the
ears end food, in nice plump eggs—no matter what the
particular breed may be. Try it. A hen without some
kind of meat, and gravel, and lime, compelled to eat
snow for water or go without, cannot make eggs. If
she has to keep constantly changing from standing on
one foot to the other to keep both from freezing, she
can't stop to think about getting up eggs. If all she
eats and can digest must be expended :n keeping up the
heat of her body, she has notbiog left to turn into eggs.
If her body is all shrunk up with cold, she hasn't room
inside for an egg of respectable size, and though her in-
' itinct• may sometimes induce her to produce • thin
' shelled " pullet's egg." at the expense of the lime in
her bones, her pride revolts against such a dwarfed pro-
duction, and she seldoin furnishes beyond two or three.
Give Madame hen the odd bits of fresh meat, and the
other fixings named above, not forgetting the water,
and make her quarters so free from cold air-holes that
she is comfortable, and she can't help giving attention
to her natural occupation of manufacturing eggs, much
to her own satisfaction, and the profit of her owner.-
4 swims Agriculturist.