BUSINESS POULTRY FARMING. 259 



sions, by means of gymnastic apparatus ; a caged squirrel 

 allowed a wheel will thrive ; and brooder chicks or layers 

 provided with a gymnasium will take even more exercise 

 than if on a free range. 



You can secure plenty of hatchable eggs in winter by 

 providing the Exerciser for your laying stock and in this 

 way get two or three months the start of breeders who 

 are dependent on the advent of spring, gentle spring. 

 You need not mind the cold much, granted that your 

 layers are through molting, if you keep their blood stir- 

 ring, and, as regards the kind of feed, you may give 

 them almost anything that comes handy. Attend to 

 their muscles, and then their gizzards, which are bun- 

 dles of powerful muscles, will work all right. There is 

 much wasted talk about a "balanced ration," and much 

 wasted time spent in weighing the constituents of hay, 

 grain and other feed stuffs, and beef, fat, milk, eggs, 

 and other animal products, expecting to be able to put 

 certain raw materials into one part of the mill and take 

 out finished goods at another part, as the manufacturer 

 does. But the processes of nature are so subtle that you 

 cannot always tell by what you put in exactly what you 

 will take out. There is no way so good as actually try- 

 ing. The test of sowing and reaping will instruct a 

 farmer concerning the adaptation of his land to a crop 

 better than elaborate analyses of the crop and the soil 

 could ever do ; and just so the only way to tell what a 

 particular ration will do for fowls or other livestock is 

 to try it. 



The state agricultural experiment station of New 

 York, at Geneva, reported in Bulletin 132 an interesting 

 experiment with a milch cow : 



" A cow fed during ninety-five days on a ration from which the fats 

 had been nearly all extracted, continued to secrete milk similar to 

 that produced when fed on the same kinds of hay and grain in their 

 normal condition. 



" The yield of milk fat during the ninety-five days was 62.9 Ibs. The 



