BALANCED RATIONS 59 



What of These Substances in the Feeding of Hens? The office of 

 protein is to build bone, muscle, tissue, hair or feathers, and is nec- 

 essary to keep the animal body in repair. It renews and keeps up 

 the animal organism. 



The office of carbohydrates is to maintain the heat of the body, 

 maintaining motive energy, and any excess over the needs of the body 

 is converted into fat. 



Fats also maintain the heat of the body and furnish motive energy; 

 if a fowl be, at any time, kept without food the fat furnishes what is 

 required in heat and motive power until all the extra fat and flesh is 

 gone, then death steps in. 



The vegetable proteins never fill the place of the animal protein, 

 both iare necessary and both fill the wants of an animal organism to 

 produce results. 



Ordinary foods rarely contain sufficient mineral substances for 

 hens that are laying eggs, hence we must provide for the shell. 

 Minerals supply the material for shell making, feather making, and 

 the egg itself must contain mineral or the embryo could never develop 

 into a chick. In the growing chick, it is necessary for the growth of 

 both bone and feathers and it must be in that form that is the easiest 

 to assimilate, in order that the chick make quick growth. Bone, in 

 any form, oyster shell, grit and even good coarse sand furnish free 

 mineral substance and if given plenty of these, neither hens nor 

 chicks will ever suffer for want of minerals. 



What a Balanced Ration Is. A balanced ration is one where the 

 protein contents have a certain definite amount as compared with 

 another certain definite amount of carbohydrates, fats and minerals. 

 It is the effort of man to regulate the needs of nature. A balanced 

 ration, to be of any account must be compounded from a list of animal 

 foods, grain foods, vegetable and mineral, in such proportions as to 

 act as substitutes for bugs, worms, seeds, grasses, and pebbles the 

 fowls would find if at liberty. 



The Processes of Digestion. The processes of digestion are chem- 

 ical in action, or rather, they are reactions. Hence so much of one 

 substance is always required to make ia change in another substance. 

 To illustrate, it requires fat and lye to make soap, just those two 

 ingredients, but more than that, it takes so much, fat and so much 

 lye, or the fat will not mix and we still have, in part at least, the two 

 separate articles, fat and lye; the chemical reaction does not completely 

 occur until the right amounts are mixed. In a similar way, the di- 

 gestive ferments can only fully act when the food is mixed in right 

 proportions. Concentrated foods, like protein, if given alone, would 

 pass out of the system unused, in part, and must be mixed with other 

 food of a bulky nature so that the digestive ferment can operate 

 on the whole. 



