MANAGEMENT, CARE AND FEEDING. 79 



scalded milk on the bread; drain off and mix with the egg and 

 place it on a sheet of brown paper. A crumb may be put into a 

 saucer of milk to attract their eye and learn them to drink by peck- 

 ing at the crumb. Give them cracker and a little of the chopped 

 egg; another time, a little egg and dry oatmeal, and scalded milk at 

 all times. After a week dispense with the egg, but continue the 

 bread crumbs and milk, johnny cake, dry oatmeal, broken wheat, 

 millet seed, cottage cheese, cut onions, fine bits of boiled meat and 

 such like, as would be suitable to their digestive organs. Some 

 sharp sand in front of the coop, and some loose earth for scratching, 

 will also be necessary after the first week. The food may be varied 

 as they grow older, and coarser and cheaper food gradually sub- 

 stituted until they can partake of the usual fare for adult fowls. 



FEEDING THE ADULT FOWLS. "Variety is the spice of life," 

 and the good effects of variety of food is apparent in the flock. 

 There is altogether too much corn fed to fowls. Barley, oats, buck- 

 wheat and wheat are much better for young and old birds than a 

 regimen of corn. Corn is lacking in mineral and albumen com- 

 ponents; it is too heating and drying to both blood and tissue. It 

 is poor food for young chicks when mixed with cold water; when 

 scalded and made friable, a mess once in a while will be in place, or 

 if boiled to a pudding consistency and seasoned, it is good for 

 young or old. 



Fowls should have plenty of coarse stuff with grain. Bran and 

 middlings, barley meal, oats and corn ground, vegetables and roots, 

 scraps of meat, slaughter house offal, especially blood, fresh clover, 

 wheat and buckwheat for the laying hens; corn and corn meal pud- 

 ding and other fat-producing food for market poultry. If the substance 

 contains nitrogen, it is most fitted for the nourishment of tissue and 

 is called plastic or nitrogenous; if it is deficient in nitrogen and has 

 an excess of carbon or hydrogen, it appears to undergo combustion 

 in the body, and is called hydrogenous, or respiratory element of 

 food (hydro-carbon); if it is fatty in its nature, it performs the double 

 duty of maintaining animal warmth and assisting in the assimilation 

 of nitrogenous compounds, and if it is saline in its quality, it goes 

 to build up the solid textures of the animal frame, and aids the 

 important work of carrying new materials into the system, and old 

 or effete matter out of it. 



Grain and green food in variety, will do a great deal towards 

 giving a bountiful supply of eggs in mild seasons; but with 

 the addition of animal food in moderate quantity, the number 



