PROPERTIES AND COMPOSITION OF POULTRY FEEDS 



23 



medicinal properties which tone up the birds, help di- 

 gestion, regulate the bowels, and help nature to resist and 

 throw off specific troubles that may be developing. 



The practical thing for a poultry keeper who thinks 

 perhaps his poultry would be the better, regularly or oc- 

 casionally, for something of this kind is to try it out. 

 He can demonstrate for himself whether there is an ad- 

 vantage to him in using it, and if he finds that there is, 

 he can decide for himself whether it is better for him to 

 continue its use, or to make such changes in feeding and 

 conditions that there will be no occasion to use them to 

 the same extent. 



Kitchen and Table Waste as Poultry Feed 



Under this heading should be included the kinds of 

 feeds that come from the table, whatever their source. 

 Thus we have all sorts of garbage from hotels and 

 restaurants, and waste bread, broken crackers and the 

 like from bakeries. None of these things come on the 

 general market. The refuse from cracker factories is the 

 only article of the sort that can be bagged and handled 

 as staple feeds are, and this is nearly all bought up in 

 advance by the large duck farms. What they may leave 

 is taken by poultrymen near the factories. Stale bread 

 is usually sold to near by poultrymen or, in metropolitan 

 districts, it may be collected by men who peddle it out 

 in lots of a few bags to suburban poultry keepers. The 



higher class hotels and restaurants now usually either 

 have their own farms where their waste is fed to poul- 

 try or hogs, or their waste is taken by someone who 

 uses it for feeding hogs, as also is most of the waste 

 from cheaper hotels and restaurants. The obstacle to 

 getting for poultry what is desirable feed for them in this 

 waste is that it requires separating what the poultry will 

 not eat, and disposing of it for swine. As feeders of 

 swine will take everything, keepers of hotels and restaur- 

 ants who have not farms of their own will not go to the 

 trouble of keeping waste in such manner that ptmltry 

 keepers can use it. So with the exception of occasional 

 supplies of stale bread, the average poultry keeper's use 

 of this class of feeds in closely limited to what comes 

 from. his own household. 



Eggs 



Of by-products of the poultry yard only infertile eggs 

 and those in which the dead germ has not yet decomposed 

 are available for feeding, and their use is generally limited 

 to feeding the chicks the first few days. Infertile eggs 

 that can be tested out at the third or fourth day, as can 

 readily be done with white-shelled eggs, are as good for 

 culinary purposes a-s ordinary stale eggs, and even eggs 

 tested out after seven days of incubation are marketable 

 for some purposes, so that the feeding of infertile eggs 

 is less common than some years ago. 



Analyses and Nutritive Values of Articles That Are or May Be Fed to Poultry 



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Corn and corn products 



Field corn 10.9 1.9 1.5 10.4 70.3 5.0 1:7.9 106 



Sweet corn 8.8 2.8 1.9 11.6 66.8 8.1 1:7.5 111 



Pop corn 10.7 1.8 1.5 11.2 69.2 5.2 1:7.3 107 



Small and immature field 



corn 35.7 1.0 0.9 7.3 50.7 3.5 1:8.1 68 



Cracked corn 12.3 1.3 8.6 73.9 b 3.9 1:9.5 103 



Corn bran 9.8 6.3 2.6 10.7 63.2 7.4 1:7.3 105 



Corn meal unbolted 12.0 2.2 1.3 8.7 74.1 4.7 1:9.5 104 



Corn meal bolted 12.0 1.2 1.0 8.9 72.0 4.9 1:9.5 106. 



Corn meal granulated 12.5 1.0 1.0 9.2 74.4 1.9 1:8.6 102 



Corn and cob meal 15.1 6.6 1.5 8.5 64.8 3.5 1:8.6 94 



Corn germ meal 10.7 4.1 4.0 9.8 64.0 7.4 1:8.4 105 



Hominy meal 11.1 3.8 2.5 9.3 64.5 8.3 1:8.7 108 



Gluten meal _ 9.6 1.6 0.7 29.4 52.4 6.3 1:2.3 111 



Gluten feed 8.1 6.4 1.3 23.2 54.7 6.3 1:2.9 107 



Wheat and wheat products 



Wheat 10.5 1.8 1.8 11.9 71.9 2.1 1:6.3 102 



Wheat screenings 11.6 4.9 2.9 12.5 65.1 3.0 1:5.8 97 



Wheat bran 11.9 9.0 5.8 15.4 53.9 4.0 1:4.1 90 



Wheat middlings 12.1 4.6 3.3 15.6 60.4 4.0 1:4.7 98 



Red dog flour .... 9.5 2.1 3.0 16.9 63.9 4.6 1:4.4 106 



Low grade flour 10.6 1.1 1.4 13.3 71.5 2.1 1:5.7 104 



Mixed feed (bran and 



middlings) 10.6 



Oats and oat products 



Oats ..11.0 9.5 3.0 11.8 59.7 5.0 1:6.1 96 



Oatmeal .. 7.9 0.9 2.0 14.7 67.4 7.1 1:5.8 113 



Oat bran 7.7 19.3 3.7 7.1 57.9 2.3 1:8.9 81 



Oat feed 8.2 12.5 4.2 12.6 56.3 6.2 1:5.7 96 



Oat middlings 9.2 3.8 3.2 20.0 56.2 7.6 1:3.7 108 



Rolled oats 8.4 1.9 15.0 66.6 7.5 1:5.7 114 



Barley and barley products 



Barley 10.9 2.7 2.4 12.4 69.8 1.8 1:6 100 



Barley screenings 12.4 7.6 3.6 12.2 61.6 2.6 1:5.8 92 



Barley meal 11.9 6.5 2.6 10.5 66.3 2.2 1:6.8 93 



Malt sprouts dry 10.2 10.7 5.7 23.2 48.5 1.7 1:2.3 87 



Brewers grains 8.2 11.0 3.6 19.9 51.7 5.6 1:3.3 97 



Brewers grains wet 75.7 3.8 1.0 5.4 12.5 1.6 1:3 24 



9.7 3.6 12.0 59.9 4.2 1:5.8 94 



Explanation of the Feed Table and of 

 the Method of Using It 



The first column in the table gives 

 the amount of water In each article. 

 All feeds have some water. The com- 

 mon grains when dry and whole have 

 about ten per cent of their weight in 

 moisture. When ground or cracked, 

 the percentage of water is slightly in- 

 creased. Green feeds generally have 

 nearly 90 per cent of their weight 

 water, but there is considerable varia- 

 bility in the table, and in many cases 

 the difference in water appears to be 

 due to difference in condition at the 

 time of analysis, one of the articles 

 being more dried or more mature in 

 growth than another, rather than to 

 actual differences in composition as 

 far as moisture is concerned. The 

 amount of water in a feed does not 

 affect its nutritive value, but may af- 

 fect its cost value. 



The second column gives the per- 

 centage of fiber. A single glance at 

 this column is all that is necessary -to 

 show whether a feed has an objection- 

 able proportion of indigestible fiber. 

 An article that has more than five or 

 six per cent of fiber is not generally 

 eaten with much relish by poultry. 

 Fiber is the one element in feeds that 

 we want as low as we can get it. 



The third column gives the ash or 

 mineral matter in the article. This is 

 higher in the by-products, as a rule, 

 than in the grains and their straight 

 milled products, but it really is not of 

 much importance, because the mineral 

 in feeds is generally insufficient and 

 the deficiency can be supplied cheaper 

 In shell and bone than in grain stuffs. 



The fourth column gives the protein 

 the flesh formers. The grains run 

 about 10 to 12 per cent protein, but 

 the seeds run much higher, and the 

 solid animal products generally higher 

 still. In considering the feeding values 

 of articles much higher in protein than 

 the common grains, the principal point 

 is their availability and the cost of 

 using them to make up the possible 

 deficiencies of protein in the grains and 

 by-products which constitute the bulk 

 of the ration. Sometimes one is more 

 economical, sometimes another. 



The fifth column gives the carbo- 

 hydrates, consisting of starches and 

 sugars and like elements. In the com- 

 mon grains, when dry, these are about 

 60 to 70 per cent, and knowing that 

 somewhere near this amount is re- 

 quired for average normal circumstan- 

 ces, we can see at a glance whether 

 an article approximates normal re- 

 quirements, and by looking at the next 



