164 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan., 



Mr. Delano. I have heard it is the last grain they will eat 

 if they are given ten or a dozen kinds, but personally I have 

 never tried it. 



Question. What about apples, potatoes, and fruit for 

 poultry ? 



Mr. Delano. You can't do better than feed them, although 

 there is very little value in potato except when used in a mash. 



Question. I think raw potatoes would 'answer the same 

 purpose. I fed them in the fall and they answered very well. 

 Last winter I had plenty of turnips, and we boiled them and 

 mixed them with coarse wheat bran, and the result from that 

 or some other cause was that I sold quite a large number of 

 dozen of eggs at fifty cents a dozen. 



Mr. Delano. If you had gone a little further and added a 

 little corn, oats, and middlings to your mash, and a little beef 

 scrap you would probably have sold more eggs at fifty cents 

 a dozen. 



Question. Right here I would like to ask you is it possible 

 to feed barred Plymouth Rocks so that they will lay eggs the 

 last of November and December, when they are worth fifty cents 

 a dozen? 



Mr. Delano. Yes, because I have had them do it. 



Question. I have tried it two or three years. I have 

 taken the best possible care of them. Three or four years ago 

 I had about thirty young pullets hatched about the 20th of 

 March, the nicest ones I ever raised. I took the best possible 

 care of them, and about the first of November I put them in a 

 pen where they had plenty of room for exercise, fed them 

 fresh meat, gave them a mash with pepper in it, but up to the 

 first of January I couldn't get but three or four eggs a day. 

 About the first of January they began to lay and up to within 

 three weeks or so they have been laying an egg a day. I have 

 spoken with others that had Barred Plymouth "Rocks and they 

 told me it was pretty hard work to get eggs early. They had 

 a large run in the orchard and yard, had plenty of fallen fruit 



