352 



Poultry Keeping in Fruit Plantations, [july, 



ployment of poultry as' a means of checking some of the insect 

 pests of fruit is a subject that deserves far more attention than 

 it has hitherto received. He has found that by keeping poultry 

 in both grass and cultivated orchards, the trees, even when not 

 sprayed or banded, are much healthier than where no fowls 

 or other stock are kept. Among the insects readily devoured 

 by poultry he mentions the caterpillars and wingless females 

 of the winter moth, the maggots of the codling moth, pug 

 moth and pear midge, slugworms, various aphides, wireworm, 

 surface larvae, leather jackets, the raspberry, and many other 

 weevils. As an example of what fowls eat in an orchard, he 

 gives the analysis of the crop and gizzard contents of a White 

 Leghorn chicken, a case taken at random out of a number of 

 records that he has kept. This chicken, five weeks old, killed 

 on 25th June, contained inside it 190 pear midge maggots, 

 127 aphides, 12 red ants, 2 tortrix caterpillars and i beetle, 

 in addition to grain, seed and other foods. A Red Sussex 

 pullet, killed on 30th April, contained 14 leather jackets, 10 

 fever flies, 2 wireworms, 4 cutworms, 5 beetles, 50 ants, 7 

 woodlice, 4 slugs, i millepede and 20 larvae of the winter moth. 

 The light breeds of fowl, such as Leghorns, hunt the best and 

 go further afield than the heavy breeds such as Wyandottes 

 and Orpingtons, and in orchards of standard trees are the most 

 suitable breeds to use for this purpose, but they will fly into 

 bush trees or low half-standards and strip them when the fruit 

 is ripe or nearly ripe, so that it is not safe to keep these light 

 breeds in plantations of bush trees after the fruit is half-grown. 

 The heavy breeds can be safely kept, even among bush fruit 

 trees, but Professor Theobald has found that they are not such 

 good hunters. 



Without charging for rent or labour, Mr. Hall's poultry 

 balance sheet has shown the following net annual profits for 

 the last five years : — 



Season No. of Birds at Net Profit. 



Beginning of Season. £ s. d. 

 Nov. ist, i9i4toOct. 31st, 1915 .. 152 (138 hens & pullets) 104 i 8 



1915 >> .. 408(140 „ ) 141 67 



1916 ,, 1917 .. 542 (312 ) 112 I 5 



1917 1918 .. 224(224 „ „ ) 237 II 5 



1918 1919 285 (189 ,, ,, ) 419 19 I 



Average of 5 ^rears .. 322 ^201 ,, );^203 o o 



No rent has been charged against the fowls, because the ground 

 is fully cropped with fruit, and the value of the birds' manure 

 is estimated to be more than equal to any sum due as rent. 



