yS BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan., 



I didn't starve the poor little things to death. I think a great 

 many flocks have been starved to death. But a great deal 

 depends on the character of the food which you give your hens. 

 Let me tell you about an experiment that they conducted at 

 the Cornell Experiment Station. Now both grits and oyster 

 shells have been spoken of during the day as necessary 

 elements entering into the feed of poultry. They conducted 

 these experiments at Cornell for the purpose of ascertaining 

 what the effect of taking grits and oyster shells away from 

 poultry would be. They conducted the experiment for six 

 months. They took four hens of Plymouth Rock pullets, all 

 of the same age, the same birds as nearly as possible as to size 

 and weight and condition of health, and all that, and the same 

 number of them in each pen. The first pen had oyster shells 

 only and no grits. The second pen had grits only and no 

 oyster shells. They had the grits before them all the time. 

 It was a cubically formed grit. The third pen had what I 

 think they called ground grit. It was sifted through cheese- 

 cloth anyway. That is all they had. They wanted to see the 

 effect of the grit upon the chickens. The fourth pen never had 

 a solitary thing in the line of grit. After the completion of the 

 experiment they killed all of those chickens in the four pens. 

 In pen number one there were fifteen hens, so fat that actually 

 one could almost say that they were not fit to eat. In the 

 second pen the fattest Plymouth Rock was not as fat as the 

 poorest in the first pen that had oyster shells. In every 

 particular the same food was given them except the difference 

 as to grits and oyster shells. The third and fourth pens, 

 without grits, were simply skeletons. 



DISCUSSION. 



Question. Did they eat as much grain as the other two? 



Mrs. Monroe. They thought about. In the third and 

 fourth pens the bones of those chickens would bend just like 

 that. They had absolutely absorbed into their systems the 

 lime that was in their bones. How much shell do you suppose 

 that those pullets ate? 



They ate five pounds of oyster shells. How many pounds 

 of that cubical grit do you suppose that second pen ate ? They 

 ate sixty pounds of that grit. They worked and worked try- 

 ing to eat that grit and trying to get what they could not find, 



