230 MISSOURI AGRICULTURAL REPORT. 



on these or any other one grain. You must keep up the hen's appetite 

 with variety. Skip from one grain to another frequently. Keep her 

 happy and busy. It pays. 



Bran. — We esteem bran as the one essential ground feed. We use 

 it dry, in large fiat boxes about the yards, where the birds young and old 

 can jump in and pick a lot of it. We also use it as a basis of all our soft 

 feeds, a carrier for our meat -meal, etc. We also use salt on our soft feeds. 

 Bran is rich in protein ; it is a good regulator ; it seems to neutralize 

 poisons. 



Clover. — I take great care in harvesting my clover for poultry, both 

 the first and second crop. It should be cut in good time, cured nicely 

 without dew or rain on it, and may be stored in gunny sacks or other- 

 wise until it is needed. We run it through the cutter and then wet or 

 steam it over night, then add bran, meat, bone, salt, etc. Do not skimp 

 the clover. Better waste some rather than that the hens should not have 

 enough. Alfalfa is the only forage plant that approaches clover as "hen 

 hay." 



Meat. — The egg is rich in albumen. You must feed it into your 

 hens or the eggs will be few in number and the whites will be thin and 

 waterly. Granulated beef-scrap and the meat meal and dried blood are 

 obtainable on the market. If you have an abundance of butchershop 

 bones, and can obtain cheap meat to boil, thickening the soup with bran 

 and vegetables, you are to be congratulated, provided you do this work 

 regularly. 



Grit. — This is the most essential grain feed. Without it your com 

 is of little good and your hens soon die of disease. 



Use mica grit, pearl grit, gravel grit, cinder grit, any old grit, and, 

 still better, all of them. Waste some grit to be sure you get enough grit. 



Shell. — One-tenth of the shell is lime. Your egg shells must be 

 heavy if you would hold a choice market. You can well afford to buy 

 oyster shell at 75 cents per hundred pounds if you sell it at sixteen cents 

 per pound, and that is what you do in the egg business. 



Bone. — Every one admits that the growing animal requires bone- 

 building material to give him strength of limb. Many, however, imagine 

 that the hen old enough to lay eggs no longer needs this kind of supply. 

 The hen, however, is the best judge, and the eagerness with which the 

 laying hen will turn even from grain to pick up fresh cut bone or even 

 drv bones, is the best evidence that she needs it in her business. Do not 

 denv her this. 



