58 BOAED OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan., 



liearing this afternoon, I am sure we shall accord them the 

 same hearty welcome that we do Miss Reed. 



Dr. RiGGS, of Hartford. In view of the importance of this 

 question, I will relate something of my experience, many 

 years since, in regard to the feeding of young chickens. I 

 found that corn, in any of its shapes or forms, either whole 

 or in the form of meal, was the most pernicious food that 

 could be given, as a whole diet, for fowls or for chickens ; 

 and the best food was oat meal, with milk that was curdled. 

 I never saw any harm from these things when mixed together 

 and fed to young chickens or to fowls, but they grew beyond 

 all account. Corn, in any shape, fed to a young animal, 

 whether it be a pig, a calf, a chicken, or any young animal, 

 is too heating, and you will invariably have trouble from it, 

 that you know not how to account lor. You can give oat 

 meal ; wheat screenings, ground up, or oat meal, with a little 

 of what is called the middlings of wheat, and as they grow a 

 little larger you can give a little ground buckwheat mixed 

 with it; but oat meal, for young chicks, a day or two after 

 they come out of the shell, when they begin to eat, mixed 

 with a little milk that is curdled, makes the finest food that 

 can possibly be given. 



Ensilage is inquired about. I know not what the practice 

 is in this country, but in foreign countries they make great 

 use of ensilage as food for hens. They will eat it very 

 greedily, especially if it be young grass, as one gentleman in 

 the audience has stated. It is preserved on the same princi- 

 ple, almost, as the Germans preserve their cabbage, for mak- 

 ing sour crout for their own table, only I think that it is a 

 little better for cattle than sour crout is for any people but 

 the Germans. The taste for it requires cultivation, and I 

 think the Yankee nation would really get to like it if they 

 would begin to eat it ; but it is altogether too odorous for our 

 modern civilization. 



There is one point on which I am not quite clear, in regard 

 to which I would ask the speaker to give an explanation. 

 She has described a certain type of fowls as the standard for 



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