32 



Feeding All-Cooked Food. 



We fouad it impossible to buy finely ground oats during the 

 latter part of August, so we tried cooking rolled oats, barley, and 

 corn-meal. The grains were used in the proportion of 50 per cent, of 

 rolled oats and 25 per cent, each of barley and corn. These foods 

 could not be used in the cramming: machine without first being 

 cooked. 



Two groups of 12 birds were fed from the trough, one group for 

 two weeks and the other only one week, with the following results : 



Group I. consisted of 12 grade Plymouth Rock cockerels. They 

 weighed when placed in the crates a total of 85f pounds. During the 

 two weeks they consumed 103 pounds of cooked food, or equal to 

 about 34 pounds of uncooked grain. They made a gain of five 

 pounds. At the end of the two weeks the birds were very thin and 

 sickly, their digestion being very bad. One of them died. The others 

 were turned out on a grass run, and two of them died the second day 

 they were out. The remainder are beginning to pick up again. 



Another lot of 12 Rock chickens, weighing a total of 62 pounds, 

 which had been fed the previous week on raw food, were given 

 cooked food. During the week they were fed on cooked food they 

 lost in weight, and three of them became so sick that they died. The 

 remaining nine were placed on uncooked food the next week, and put 

 on more than three-quarters of a pound each. 



Two hundred chickens were crammed with cooked food. A few of 

 the birds gained slightly, but the majority of them lost in weight. 

 After having been fed in this manner for one week, a few of the best 

 were shipped to a Toronto dealer, who complained about there being no 

 meat on the breast. They sold for y cents per pound, live weight, 

 while chickens fed on raw food sold for 13 cents per pound. The 

 remaining birds were turned loose on a srrass run. 



The chief difficulty with the cooked food appears to be that it 

 damages the chicken's digestion. Many of the birds that were put 

 out on the grass run after being fed on cooked food have not recover- 

 ed yet — three weeks after being turned out. 



Cooked food can no doubt be fed to advantage in conjunction 

 with raw food, but an all-cooked ration that is of a forcing nature 

 appears to be entirely unsuitable for fattening fowls. 



Geain Rations. 



The following table shows the amount of feed consumed by the 

 different groups of chickens, the cost of producing a pound of gain, 

 and the number of pounds of grain it took to make one pound of gain. 



