96 THE BEGINNER IN POULTRY 



testimony as to the palatability of the mess. It is best 

 fed, I think, in connection with one third its bulk* of 

 clover meal or chaff and the same bulk of bran, with 

 corn meal and wheat middlings enough to form a rather 

 firm and somewhat sticky mash. If the meal can be 

 well scalded, it will behave much better. One may add 

 meat scrap in any desired quantity, up to the 10 per 

 cent, if the meat is to be fed with the mash. My own 

 preference would be to place the meat, mixed with a 

 very little clover meal, in feeding racks by itself, leav- 

 ing it before the fowls all the time, or for a specified 

 portion of each day, the covers being closed during the 

 " close hours." 



The one ideal way to handle small lots of birds which 

 are kept for fancy breeding and which must be con- 

 stantly segregated from others is to have two long runs 

 sloping gently away from each pen. Openings should 

 admit the fowls to either, as the owner desires. While 

 the fowls occupy one, the other is seeded and growing 

 a crop of green stuff, into which they may be turned as 

 soon as it is well established. As they often trample 

 and foul more than they eat, it is better, for a time, to 

 let them into the fresh yard for stated periods, perhaps 

 an hour at night and another in the morning. As the 

 growth hardens, they may occupy the yard all day, 

 when the companion yard is to be sown. 



If fowls are not to be kept in separate small flocks, 

 yet must be restrained, it is better to have one yard 

 entirely surroitnd the long house, or the series of colony 

 houses, in order that a few furrows of earth may be 

 sown and turned or cultivated every second day, oats 

 being thus buried very liberally beneath the surface. 



