300 
Some Minor Rural Industrie^. 
Birmingham Show, November, 1893, Mr. Brooke exhibited two 
pairs of cross-bred pullets, from an Indian Game cock and a 
Dorking hen ; the one pair weighed 14 lb. 1^ oz., and the other 
pair 13 lb. 7 oz. 
Mr. Brooke’s successful experience imparts a special value 
to his general hints to poultry breeders, which he gives as 
follows : — 
Farmers and others cannot pay too much attention to the details of 
housing and feeding, and this should be varied according to the season of 
the year and the temperature. Only on these conditions can the birds 
thi'ive and become a source of profit. We change our stock every second 
year, it being an acknowledged fact that where the stock is left for three 
or four years — or indefinitely, as too often happens — the bird deteriorates in 
size. One frequently finds a man keeping four or five hens and one cockerel 
with them for the period just mentioned, and the breed naturally degene- 
rates. One authority, who has been delivering a series of lectures in Essex, 
was surprised to find the people of that county exceedingly retrograde in the 
selection of their stock, more especially as they are fairly successful in 
bringing up strong hardy birds for table 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, say in November, 
the pullets usually in a few weeks begin laying, when eggs are most in 
request, as soon as 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 keeps about six silver-pencilled Hamburghs in a small 
stable-yard with nothing but gravel to run on ; and it was noticed that 
this gentleman was getting more eggs from those six birds than were many 
of the poultry-keepers round about with twelve or fifteen mongrels. At 
one place there were 160 fowls, old and young, which produced about four 
diggs per week. When he asked the farmer’s wife why she did not clear off 
the old hens, she replied, characteristically, “ because they are such good 
sitters in the spring.” It is ridiculous to keep a lot of old hens through the 
winter with the chances of their laying a few eggs in March and. April, and 
then bringing up a brood of chickens ; and yet hundreds of people do this. 
If they kept young hens or pullets they might get eggs all through the 
autumn and winter. 
As regards feeding, I would be sparing at first, accustoming the birds 
very gradually to the assimiliation of their food. In the early morning, 
duiing the very cold spring weather, we give the fowls hot meal, mixed to 
a proper consistency and put upon small boards in front of them in the pens. 
It should be removed if the fowls do not want it, and their appetite will 
then return. At no time should they have sour food ; and all stale victuals 
should be taken from the trough. In the middle of the day we give them 
wheat ; and the last thing at night a little maize, but only in a sufficient 
quantity so that they can pick everything up. We keep them by the dozen 
or so in large pens, and change them from one pen to another every three 
weeks. After changing the pens, generally about three or four times a year, 
we lime the grass, an operation that sweetens the ground. I highly approve 
