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Show Avoid Crowding Poultry Over-crowding is one of the most, common mistakes made by many poultrymen in Utah each fall, and a minimum of three square feet for leghorns and lour square feet of floor space for heavier birds should be planned for ech bird, points out Carl Frischknecht, poultryman of the Utah State Asricultural College Extension Service. Pullets should' be housed before stormy weather begins, to prevent colds, and they should be handled with care when they are moved from the range to their permanent perman-ent ' quarters, to prevent them from becoming nervous and flighty, he states, adding that they also should be graded carefully when ihey are being added to the laying lay-ing pens. "A high correlation exists between be-tween high egg production and early maturity- In other words, pullets that start to lay when they are 170 to 200 days of age produce more eggs the first year than pullets that are 200 or more days old when the first egg is laid. There is only one time in the life of the bird when it can be determined whether it is an early or late-maturing bird, and that is when the. bird starts to lay. Pullets that are well-developed, mature, and ready for egg-production egg-production should be banded with blue celluloid legbands, housed together to-gether and given feed that will get them into laying with the least loss of time. "Pullets that are not so well-developed well-developed and not ready to start laying should be banded with red-colored celluloid leg-bands, housed together and given a little more time to grow and mature before they come into heavy egg production. Pullets that are small, slow-maturing, underdeveloped or handicapped, are unprofitable. All such birds should be culled out and disposed of at the time pullets are being housed." To eliminate hens eatinsr their own eggs, house the pullets before be-fore they start to lay, provide at ltast one nest for every five or six pullets and allow them to get fully accustomer to the nest, gather eggs often, feed oats and green feed to keep the birds well-occupied, well-occupied, dope broken eggs with turpentine or ammonia, and trim the upper beak of all birds, cutting cut-ting as close to tne soft-portion of the beak as possible without causing rxling. |