Home › Rural And Domestic Economy › Poultry

Poultry

evening. You must be very careful in order to guard against the distemper to which they are liable, in the choice of a situation for breeding the birds up, where no poultry, pheasants, or turkeys, etc., have ever been kept, such as the warm side of a field, orchard, or pleasure-ground, or garden, or even on a common, or a good green lane, under circumstances of this kind, or by a wood side; but then it is proper for a man to keep with them under a temporary hovel, and to have two or three dogs chained at a proper distance, with a lamp or two at night. .

The birds going on as before mentioned should so continue till September or (if very early bred) the middle of August. Before they begin to shift the long feathers in the tail, they are to be shut up in the basket with the hen regularly every night. For such young pheasants as are chosen for breeding stock at home, and likewise to turn out in the following spring, provide a new piece of ground, large and roomy for two pens, where no pheasants, etc., have been kept, and there put the young birds in as they begin to shift their tails. Such of them as are intended to be turned out at a future time, or in another place, put into one pen netted over, and leave their wings as they are, and those wanted for breeding put in the other pen, cutting one wing of each bird. The gold and silver pheasants pen earlier, or they will be off. Cut the wing often, and when first penned feed all the young birds with barley-meal, dough, corn, plenty of green turnips, and alum curd, to make which take new milk, as much as the young birds require, and boil it with a lump of alum, so as not to make the curd hard and tough, but custard-like. A little of this curd twice a day, and ants' eggs after every time they have had a sufficient quantity of the other food. If they do not eat heartily, give them some ants' eggs to create an appetite, but by no means in such abundance as to be considered their food. Not more than four hens should be allowed in the pens to one cock. Never put more eggs under a hen than she can well and closely cover, the eggs being fresh and carefully preserved. Short broods to be joined and shifted to one hen; common hen pheasants in close pens, and with plenty of cover, will sometimes make their nests and hatch their own eggs: but they seldom succeed in rearing their brood, being so naturally shy; whence should this method be desired, they must be left entirely to themselves, as they feel alarm even in being looked at. Eggs for setting are generally ready in April. Period of incubation the same in the pheasant as in the common hen.

Pheasants, like the pea-fowl, will clear grounds of insects and reptiles, but will spoil all wall-trees within their reach, by pecking off every bud and leaf.

Strict cleanliness to be observed, the meat not to be tainted with dung, and the water to be pure and often renewed. Food for grown pheasants, barley or wheat; generally the same as for other poultry. In a cold spring, hemp seed, or other warming seeds, are comfortable, and will forward the breeding stock.

To manage Young Chickens. under a coop abroad, upon a dry spot, and, if possible, not within reach of another hen, since the chickens will mix, and the hens are apt to maim and destroy those which do not belong to them.

Nor should they be placed near young fowls, which are likely to crush them, being always eager for their small meat.

The first food should be split grits, afterwards tall wheat; all watery food, soaked bread or potatoes, being improper; corn or mill-screenings (before the wheat is ground) will do. Eggs boiled hard, or curds chopped small, are very suitable as first food. Their water should be pure, and often renewed, and there are pans made in such forms, that the chickens may drink without getting into the water, which, by wething their feet and feathers, numbs and injures them; a basin in the middle of a pan of water will answer the end; the water running around it. There is no necessity for cooping the brood beyond two or three days, but they may be confined as occasion requires, or suffered to range, as they are much benefited by the foraging of the hen. They should not be let out too early in the morning, whilst the dew lies upon the ground, nor be suffered to range over wet grass, which is a common and fatal cause of disease in fowls. Another caution requisite is to guard them against unfavorable changes of the weather, particularly if rainy. Nearly all the diseases of fowls arise from cold moisture. For the period of the chickens' quitting the hen there is no general rule; when she begins to roost, if sufficiently forward, they will follow her; if otherwise, they should be secured in a proper place till the time arrives when they are to associate with the other young poultry, since the larger are sure to overrun and drive from their food the younger broods.

Access to a barn-yard for worms is good for them. A warm house for shelter in winter is very important for chickens.

To hatch Chickens in the Egyptian Mode.

The mamals or ovens of Egypt are scarcely above nine feet in height, but they have an extent in length and breadth which renders them remarkable, and yet they are more so in their internal structure. The centre of the building is a very narrow gallery, usually about the width of three feet, extending from one end of the building to the other, the height of which is from eight to nine feet; the structure for the most part of brick. The entrance into the oven is through the gallery, which commands the whole extent of it, and facilitates the several operations that are necessary to keep the eggs to the proper degree of heat. The oven has a door, not very wide, and only as high as it is broad; this door, and many others in use in the mamals, are commonly no more than round holes.

The gallery is a corridor, with this difference from our common corridors, which have only one row of rooms, whereas that of the mamal has always two rows of them on both sides; namely, one on the ground floor, and another above.

Every one upon the ground floor has one above. perfectly equal, both in length and breadth. The rooms of each row on the ground floor, are all equal, in length, breadth, and height. Reaumur observes, "We know of no other rooms in the world so low as these, being only three feet in height."

Their breadth, which is in the same direction with the length of the gallery, is four or five feet; they are very narrow in proportion to their length, which is twelve or fifteen feet.

The chickens first hatched are to be taken from the hen, lest she be tempted to leave her task unfinished. They may be secured in a basket of wool or soft hay, and kept in a moderate heat; if the weather be cold, near the fire. They will require no food for twenty-four hours, should it be necessary to keep them so long from the hen.

Every one of these rooms has its door or round The whole brood being hatched, place the hen | aperture, about a foot and a half in diameter, opening into the gallery, the hole being wide enough for a man to creep through. All the eggs to be hatched are first ranged in these rooms.

Four or five thousand eggs are put into each of them. These are the real ovens, so that the whole edifice, which is denominated a chicken oven, is an assemblage of many ovens set together, side by side, opposite and over each other, and in the course of the process a part of the eggs are warmed in the upper rooms, after having been previously in the lower.

Forty or fifty thousand eggs are hatched at once, or another account extends the number to eighty thousand. The eggs are spread on mats, flocks or flax, in each room upon the ground floor, where they contract their first and general warmth, during a certain number of days.

The heat of the air in the inferior rooms, and consequently that of the eggs, would rise to an excessive degree, were the fire in the gutter incessantly kept up. They keep it up only an hour in the morning, and an hour at night, and they style these heatings the dinner and supper of the chickens; they receive, however, two more meals, that is, luncheon and afternoon meal, the fire being lighted four times a day.

On the day on which they cease to light the fires, some of the eggs of each inferior room are always conveyed into the room above. The eggs had been too much heaped in the former, and it is now time to extend and give them more room.

The proper number of eggs from each inferior room having been removed into the room above, all the apertures of the rooms and of the gallery are closely and exactly stopped with bungs of tow, excepting, perhaps, half the apertures in the arches or ceilings of the upper rooms, which are left open in order to procure there a circulation of air. This precaution is sufficient to preserve in the ovens, for many days together, the temperature which has been obtained; which indeed would be the case with ovens upon so considerable a scale in any country, more especially one so hot as Egypt.

Three hundred and eighty-six ovens are kept in Egypt annually, during four or six months, allowing more time than is necessary to hatch eight successive broods of chickens, ducks and turkeys, making on the whole yearly three thousand and eighty-eight broods. The number in different hatchings is not always the same, from the occasional difficulty of obtaining a sufficient number of eggs, which may be stated at a medium between the two extremes of forty and eighty thousand to each oven.

The overseer contracts to return, in a living brood, to his employer, two-thirds of the number , to his employer, twothirds of the number of eggs set in the ovens all above being his own perquisite, in addition to his salary for the season, which is from eighty to forty crowns, exclusive of his board. According to report, the crop of poultry thus artificially raised in Egypt was seldom, if ever, below that ratio, making the enormous annual amount of ninety-two million six hundred and forty thousand.

The chickens are not sold from the stove by tale, but by the bushel or basket full!

Excellent Substitute for Candles.

Procure meadow-rushes, such as they tie the hop shoots to the poles with. Cut them when they have attained their full substance, but are still green. The rush, at this age, consists of a body of pith with a green skin on it. Cut off both ends of the rush and leave the prime part, which, on an average, may be about a foot and a half long.

Then take off all the green skin except for about a fifth part of the way round the pith. Thus it is a piece of pith all but a little strip of skin in one part all the way up, which is necessary to hold the pith together.

The rushes being thus prepared, the grease is melted, and put, in a melted state, into something that is as long as the rushes are. The rushes are put into the grease, soaked in it sufficiently, then taken out and laid in a bit of bark taken from a young tree, so as not to be too large. This bark is fixed up against the wall by a couple of straps put round it, and there it hangs for the purpose of holding the rushes.

The rushes are carried about in the hand; but to sit by, to work by, or to go to bed by, they are fixed in stands made for the purpose, some of which are high to stand on the ground, and some low to stand on a table. These stands have an iron part something like a pair of pliers to hold the rush in, and the rush is shifted forward from time to time, as it burns down to the thing that holds it.

These rushes give a better light than a common small dip candle, and they cost next to nothing, though the laborer may with them have as much light as he pleases.

Petroleum or kerosene is now cheaper than candles, and gives a beautiful light.

To cultivate Mustard.

A yard square of ground, sown with common mustard, the crop of which may be ground for use in a little mustard-mill as wanted, will save some money. The mustard will look brown instead of yellow, but the former color is as good as the latter; and, as to the taste, the real mustard has certainly a much better taste than that of the drugs and flour which sometimes go under the name of mustard. Let any one try it, and he will never use the latter again. The drugs, if taken freely, leave a burning at the pit of the stomach, which the real mustard does not.

To cure Herrings, Pilchards, Mackerel, Sprats, etc.

Reservoirs of any size, vats or casks, perfectly water-tight, should be about half filled with brine made by dissolving about twenty-eight parts of solid salt in seventy-two of fresh water. The fish, as fresh as possible, gutted or not must be plunged into this fully-saturated brine in such quantity as nearly to fill the reservoir; and, after remaining quite immersed for five or six days, they will be fit to be packed as usual, with large-grained solid salt, and exported to the hottest climates. As brine is always weakest at the upper part, in order to keep it of a uniform saturation, a wooden lattice-work frame, of such size as to be easily let into the inside of the reservoir, is sunk an inch or two under the surface of the brine, for the purpose of suspending upon it lumps of one or two pounds, or larger , of solid salt, which effectually saturates whatever moisture may exude from the fish; and thus the brine will be continued of the utmost strength so long as any part of the salt remains undissolved. The solidity of the lumps admits of their being applied several times, or whenever the reservoirs are replenished with fish; and the brine, although repeatedly used, does not putrefy; nor do the fish, if kept under the surface, ever become rancid.

All provisions are best preserved by this method, especially bacon, which, when thus cured, is not so liable to become rusty as when done by the usual method of rubbing with salt.

Portable Ice-House.

Take an iron-bound butt or puncheon and knock out the head; then cut a very small hole