THE BOOK OF POULTRY. 



uncertain, and offer ready occasion to County 

 Council lecturers for cheap ridicule ; but nearly 

 all practical breeders have come to believe in 

 them, and again it is well to keep on the safe 

 side.* 



We turn now to the chickens themselves. In 

 regard to feeding, there is nothing to add to 

 what was said in Chapter VI., except that 

 cheapness of any food takes a very 

 Care of the secondary place in the case of prize 

 Chickens. stock, and as there can be no doubt 

 of the superiority of oatmeal and 

 ground oats as food for obtaining size, wherever 

 that is valued these should be mainly used in 

 preference to cheaper substitutes, though such 

 may come in as changes. Oatmeal alone mixes 

 up hard, but a little biscuit-meal added will 

 make it friable, and be also less dry ; dry meal 

 stirred with boiled porridge is also greedily 

 relished. It may be well to remark that such 

 choice of food and care in giving it is of great 

 effect in restoring size and bone to a strain 

 which has degenerated. Thus, let pencilled 

 Hamburghs, which have become almost Bantams 

 through long in-breeding for narrow pencillings, 

 be carefully subjected to such a regimen, and 

 size may be recovered by feeding alone, to a 

 very perceptible degree. 



Prize poultry are not reared by people who 

 lie in bed in the morning. The chicks must 

 have their first meal as soon as it is broad day- 

 light, and for the earlier broods there is no 

 better material for it than Mr. Douglas's custard 

 squeezed from the whey, mixed perhaps with a 

 little oatmeal. In some yards the incubator 

 wasters will furnish eggs for this ; if not, a drink 

 of hot milk goes a long way, with the breakfast, 

 which in this case is perhaps best of porridge 

 and added dry meal. What is needed for rapid 

 growth is a first meal quickly digested, so as to 

 allow of keen appetite for the next one. The 

 extra feed at night, by lamplight, has been 

 already treated of, and we only add here that 

 this early and late feeding has a bearing upon 

 size and vigour which does not seem generally 

 understood. The object is not, as some suppose, 

 merely to get in an extra meal. While very 

 young it has that effect, but at a later period, 

 supposing that a stage when four meals a day 



• It is worth noting here that during December, 1900, 

 some interesting correspondence bearing on this subject ap- 

 peared in the Lancet. One medical gentleman related a visit 

 to a professional Iriend, a cup-wmner with pigeons at the Crystal 

 Palace. One of the divisions of the latter's loft faced a lawt 

 generally covered with white linen being dried ; and the inmates 

 of this pen, whatever they were, were specially subject to 

 albinism. It was also found that some Turbits and Owls next 

 to a pen in which Pouters were kept were more or less subject 

 to Pouter markings. 



are deemed best has been reached, the lengthened 

 time between first and last feeds will enlarge the 

 time between each two meals, and shorten the 

 night interval, which is longest of all. Meals 

 thus more divided are better assimilated, main- 

 tain keener appetite, and result in better growth. 

 We have already mentioned the use of bone 

 dust or dry bone meal, and its beneficial effects. 

 In deciding for or against its use, the postpone- 

 ment which it causes of the final 

 Use of make-up of the bird must be taken 



Phosphates. \xi\,o account. There is another way, 

 however, in which phosphates can 

 be added to the food of any young stock in 

 which experience has shown that leg weakness 

 is to be dreaded, and it cannot be too well 

 remembered that this ailment is more easily 

 guarded against, than cured when it actually 

 occurs in any marked form. This is to add to 

 the food (which is better than with the water) 

 a little of " Parrish's Chemical Food," a syrup 

 of the phosphates of lime, iron, and soda. A 

 teaspoonful may be added to each feed of soft 

 food amongst a dozen chicks a fortnight old, or 

 half a dozen at the age of three months. The 

 effect is most marked in cases which require it, 

 and this valuable medicine, since we first intro- 

 duced it to poultry breeders in 1872, has well 

 established its merits all over the world. So 

 incontestible have these been, in fact, that they 

 have led to the use of Parrish's Food occasion- 

 ally in a manner simply ridiculous, for acute 

 ailments, such as rheumatism or cramp. It is 

 of no use whatever for such cases. It is essen- 

 tially a slow-acting method oi feeding phosphates 

 to a system deficient, or known from experience 

 to be likely to prove deficient, in them, and acts 

 solely by the long and gradual assimilation ot 

 these ingredients. Its effects are seen only after 

 weeks or even months, not after hours or even 

 days. 



Such additions to ordinary dietary, which 

 may or may not be advisable, owing either to 

 delicacy in prize stock or greater size desired in 

 it, lead us naturally to the question 

 Condiments o^ condiments or spiced foods, so 

 and widely advertised as specially bene- 



stimuiants. fl^ial to stock of this kind. The 

 question is a little complex, and it 

 is not so easy to state the truth in a way 

 unmixed with error. There is no doubt that 

 fowls on a wide range, and especially in the 

 tropical jungle which was the original home of 

 the sp.'cies, eat much of the leaves and fruit 

 of heather and other wild shrubs and plants oi 

 an aromatic nature, which give the well-known 

 aromatic flavour to our "game" birds. Such 

 merely aromatic principles, in moderation, can- 



