46 



THE BOOK OF POULTRY. 



in cold weather. Potato peelings may be, if 

 necessary, eked out by scraps from the dinner 

 table, and part of these are very valuable, especi- 

 ally the lean meat ; but caution is necessary. 

 Often such scraps consist chiefly of bread-crusts 

 and fat. In neither is there any appreciable 

 egg-material, and if too much of them be given, 

 prejudicial fattening with muscular weakness is 

 sure to occur. They can be used to a certain 

 extent, but if they abound, only so far that they 

 shall not exceed between one-third to one-half 

 the bulk of the food, the rest being made up of 

 sharps, or sharps with bran. To give more will 

 be no economy, owing to the evil effects. The 

 green vegetables will be beneficial, if any are 

 left. To have much bread-scraps denotes of 

 course great waste in a household. In any case, 

 all the scraps used should go into the break- 

 fast, and not be given in addition, as many do. 

 Table scraps always need care and judgment in 

 use, and we have traced many failures in domestic 

 poultry-keeping to the practice of giving a fair 

 breakfast of meal food, and then household 

 scraps at mid-day beside. No fowls could long 

 withstand such a regimen as that ; first eggs 

 must fail, and finally liver congestion will carry 

 off the victims. 



In the case of larger numbers of fowls, some 

 definite " mash " will have to be decided upon 

 for each day, or week, or more ; a certain variety 

 should be studied for the sake of health and 

 appetite, and the market will also have to be 

 consulted. Either ground oats, or a really good 

 sample of middlings will be quite suitable alone : 

 oatmeal (or hulled oats coarsely ground) is dear 

 food by weight for mere egg-production, in 

 spite of its admirable qualities ; but it is all 

 food, and goes far. If only for variety, the mash 

 will usually have to be compounded. In this 

 there is room for endless combination, but on 

 that head sufficient has been said in the preced- 

 ing chapter. Merely as further examples, we 

 will quote here three different mashes from 

 different sources in America, where the subject 

 has been very systematically studied, (i) Equal 

 weights of maize meal, ground oats, bran, and 

 fine middlings. Here it will be seen that the 

 oats and middlings are fairly high in ratio, and 

 that the maize is balanced by the bran ; but it 

 is a common practice to mix further in this 

 mash I lb. of cut bone, or scrap meat, or meat- 

 meal, to each twenty-five hens. (2) Middlings 

 100 lbs., maize-meal (coarsely ground) 75 lbs., 

 gluten-meal (an American product) 25 lbs., 

 clover-meal 80 lbs., meat-meal 35 lbs. These 

 are weighed dry, mixed with boiling water at 

 night, and kept covered and warm to cook until 

 morning ; the mixture is from a successful egg- 



farm, and represents a high forcing diet. (3) 

 Pea-meal 20 lbs., bran 30 lbs., oatmeal 15 lbs., 

 barley-meal 10 lbs., meat-meal 20 lbs., wheat- 

 meal 10 lbs., linseed-meal 15 lbs., clover-meal 

 40 lbs. We have selected this as an absolutely 

 foolish extreme, the ratio being the tremend- 

 ously high one of I : 2. One would also have 

 thought such a complicated mixture unwise. 

 But a bulletin issued from the Agricultural 

 Department, U.S.A., affirms as the result of 

 experiment that " in forcing fowls for egg-pro- 

 duction it is found best to make up a ration 

 of many kinds of grain. This invariably gives 

 better results than one or two kinds, although 

 the nutritive ratio of the ration may be about 

 the same. It has been found by experiment 

 that the fowls not only relish their ration more 

 when composed of many kinds of grain, but 

 that a somewhat larger percentage of the whole 

 ration is digested than when it is composed of 

 fewer ingredients." 



The clover-meal here used is clover hay 

 coarsely ground ; and some use clover hay 

 cut into fine chaff. In either case the clover 

 has boiling water poured on it at night, and 

 is left covered over with a cloth to "steep" 

 and soften till morning, or the entire mixed 

 mash may be left to cook in the same way. 

 The birds then eat it eagerly, but if given raw 

 or unsteeped, clover hay repels them. 



We give one more mash as fed to his White 

 Leghorns by Mr. Wyckoff, who obtained an 

 average of 196 eggs from a flock of no less than 

 600 in all. It comprised 100 lbs. maize, ground 

 fine, 200 lbs. oats, ground fine, 150 lbs. bran, 

 about 8 lbs. dried beef scraps, all moistened with 

 skim milk, which added to the albuminoids. At 

 noon, green food was given — mangolds or 

 cabbage in winter, clover or kale in summer, 

 with sometimes a sprinkle of grain in the litter. 

 At night they had mixed gi'ain — in winter 

 equal quantities of wheat, oats, good buckwheat, 

 and maize; in summer the maize was reduced 

 one-half. The use of bran, as rich in albuminoids, 

 and laxative, is very general in America. 



Some of the prepared foods are exceedingly 

 good, and palatable, and convenient, but of 

 course more expensive ; for domestic use, how- 

 ever, this is balanced by household contribu- 

 tions. Spratt's and similar biscuit-meals are 

 useful in this way, and Liverine may be men- 

 tioned as an albuminoid corrective ; a mash 

 of barley-meal, sharps, and Liverine would be 

 very good, or one of biscuit-meal, bran, and 

 potato peelings. We would only repeat, that 

 while very useful as food, bran may occasionally 

 cause intestinal irritation. This effect is not very 

 frequent, but a watch should be kept where 



