80 ‘TWENTY-FIFTH ANNIVERSARY REPORT. 
to feed some salt, especially if it increases the palatability of the 
ration. 
Moderate quantities of salt had been fed to poultry with apparent 
advantage, but the limitations of its use were not known. A feeding 
trial’? was therefore made with twelve hens to get some suggestion 
as to the approximate limit of its safe feeding to mature fowls. 
For one lot of hens salt was mixed in the food, increasing in amount 
by periods of feeding. Until it was fed at the rate of .063 oz. per 
day per fowl (nearly one-half pint per day for 100 hens) no bad 
effects were noticed. With this amount, however, diarrhea attacked 
a few of the hens, but the trouble disappeared when the amount 
of salt in the food was reduced about one-third. When the hens 
were allowed free access to boxes of coarse barrel salt, not enough 
was eaten to show ill effect, either by hens that had been 
fed salt freely for two months or by those that had been without 
any for the same time. . 
Little significance was attached to the egg yield from these old 
hens fed at an unproductive time of year, but twice as many eggs 
were obtained from the salt-fed hens as from the others, so there 
was no indication of unfavorable effect in this direction. When 
reporting the experiment it was suggested that salt at the rate of 
one ounce per day for 100 mature fowls could be fed without risk. 
In later feeding it was found that five ounces of salt in every 100 
pounds of food was a safe proportion. The Station has not advised 
the feeding of any salt to young chicks or until they are two or 
three months old. : 
PRESERVING EGGS. 
At different times tests'? were made at the Station of a number 
of methods recommended for preserving eggs, and also of some 
modifications of these methods that seemed likely to be equally or 
more successful. No tests were made of cold storage, but only of 
those methods that could be used with little expense on a small 
scale. No method of dry packing was found to give satisfactory 
results whether the eggs were turned regularly or not, and most 
methods were worthless. The best results were secured by keeping 
the eggs immersed in solutions either of lime, lime and salt, water 
glass (from 10 to 20 per ct. solution) or a proprietary solution con- 
sisting largely of water glass. On the whole, preference was given 
® Bul. 39; also in Rpt. 10:200, 201 (1890). 
* Report 10:201, 202 (1891). 
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