106 PROFITS IN POULTRYc 



CHARCOAL AND STIMULANTS. 



Poultry in domestication are not in a natural condition. 

 Their diet is more or less restricted in variety, and that 

 which they have is frequently of a character to fatten 

 rather than to promote growth or egg-laying. This may 

 be in a measure counteracted by condimental food or 

 stimulants. Before such measures are taken the poultry- 

 raiser should provide everything else necessary or de- 

 sirable grain in variety, broken bones, oyster-shells or 

 other form of lime, green food of some kind, cabbage or 

 roots, gravel, and a dry-dusting box; besides, pure water; 

 and if milk or buttermilk can be had, a trough for that 

 should be provided. 



Stimulants must be regarded not as food, but as 

 medicine, used sparingly, and never daily. One mess of 

 stimulating food once in two or three days is enough. 



Charcoal should be a stand-by. It defends against 

 disease, keeps up the tone of the system, aids digestion, 

 and promotes laying. Feed it powdered, and mix it up 

 with wheat bran and Indian meal. Add to this mixture a 

 neaping table-spoonful of powdered Cayenne pepper for a 

 dozen fowls, given every third day, or every second day 

 in a cold snap, and continued for about ten days or two 

 weeks, now and again, is promotive of laying and of 

 health. This soft feed may be mixed with hot boiled 

 potatoes, and fed either in the morning or at noon. 

 Besides the hard grain fed at evening regularly, so that 

 the fowls ,or other poultry may go to roost with full 

 crops, and a little wlieat scattered among leaves or straw 

 to make them scratch for exercise, they will need little 

 else. 



