THE KINDS OF FOOD. 113 



better than an acre without such an artificial provision 

 of natural conditions. But the feed, which must he all 

 brought to the fowls, costs, in money if purchased, or in 

 labor if raised upon the cultivated part of the farm. In 

 fowl keeping upon a small scale, where one flock has for 

 a range as large a portion of a farm swarming with 

 insects as they choose to travel over, food is obtained 

 for nothing. The food for fowls is more expensive than 

 that of any other livestock, in proportion to the value 

 of the animals themselves, necessitating economy in its 

 choice. There are many things "good" for fowls, but 

 we must use principally those only which supply all the 

 needful nutritive elements, and are, at the same time, 

 the cheapest. 



There are three classes of articles of which the natural 

 and indispensable diet of fowls consists, grains or seeds, 

 green plants and insects. Corn and wheat screenings 

 corn especially should be the main reliance to fill the 

 first division ; boiled potatoes and raw cabbage in win- 

 ter, and newly mown grass, clover or alfalfa in summer, 

 are the most suitable vegetables, and chandlers' scraps 

 and butchers' waste, procured fresh, are the most eco- 

 nomical animal food, excepting near the coast, where 

 clams and various sorts of fish can be obtained at a 

 trifling cost. While depending mostly upon the above, 

 because they are the best and cheapest, a great many 

 other things must be given occasionally for the sake of 

 variety, such as oats, buckwheat, rye, barley, wheat and 

 brewers' grains ; dried corn fodder and clover rowen in 

 winter; various vegetables, such as carrots, beets and 

 yellow turnips, boiled and thickened with corn meal or 

 wheat bran ; raw onions chopped fine ; and for animal 

 food, sometimes near cities young calves may be obtained 

 from milkmen at a low price, and the carcasses boiled 

 and fed. This last remark applies chiefly to cities at 

 the east and northeast. 

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