CHAPTER IV 



Preparation of Feeds For Poultry 



Suitable Equipment an Important Factor in the Several Processes of Cutting, Grinding, Cooking and Mixing Feeds 



For Poultry on Any Scale Directions for Making Raw, Half-cooked and Cooked Mashes 



Baking Johnnycake Mixing Dry Mashes Sprouting Oats Preparing all 



Kinds of Kitchen and Garden Waste in Appetizing Forms 



A MOIST mash, properly compounded and used, is 

 a highly serviceable feature in a ration for poul- 

 try. A mash of the same ingredients, improperly 

 mack, becomes one of the most objectionable things in 

 poultry feeding. The making of a good mash is not at all 

 a difficult matter, yet in the days when the use of moist 

 mashes was more common than now, probably not one in 

 three of those who used them made mashes that were 

 appetizing to the birds, and would give the results de- 

 sired. The general reason for this was CARELESSNESS. 

 Most people who used mashes learned to make them 

 either by experimenting with mashes of different com- 

 position and mixed in different ways, or from instructions 

 given in books and papers. 



These instructions were not always as explicit as 

 they should be. The most common description of the 

 proper texture of a moist mash was crumbly, which is a 

 very indefinite term. While a properly made mash is some- 

 what crumbly, a crumbly mash is not necessarily well made. 

 It is difficult to put descriptions of the properties of such 

 mixtures into words that will always convey just the mean- 

 ing desired. In fact it is impossible to do so. The de- 

 scription that may give the right idea to the majority of 

 those who read it will often fail to do so for a consider- 

 ib'e number. The verbal description must therefore be re- 

 garded as never fully adequate, but more or less accur- 

 ately suggestive to different persons according to their 

 habitual understanding of the words used, and always to 

 be tested as to the correct interpretation of it by the 



appetite the birds show for the mixture made, and by the 

 absence of undesirable effects in using it. 



Suitable Equipment the First Essential 



Where moist mashes are to be fed regularly to any 

 considerable stock of poultry, or are to be used at all for a 

 large stock, convenient apparatus for cooking and mixing, 

 and for handling the mash in feeding should be provided. 

 Much of the complaint about the labor involved in the 

 use of moist and cooked mashes arises from the fact that 

 proper facilities for such work are not provided, and so 

 either a great deal more time is used than is really 

 necessary, or the work is not done as it should be. 



Equipment For Mixing a Pail of Mash 



In a 12-quart pail, up to eight or nine quarts of moist 

 mash can be conveniently mixed. Where mash is given 

 as a full meal, a quart will usually feed from six to eight 

 or nine medium-sized hens. A light bulky mash if appe- 

 tizing is eaten in much larger quantities than a more 

 concentrated mash that is just as much relished by the 

 fowls. So, according to the kind of mash made, an or- 

 dinary pail will answer for mixing the mash for flocks 

 up to about 75 birds. In a 16-quart pail about twelve 

 quarts may be mixed. That is about as far as we can go 

 without making special provision for mash making. When 

 mash is mixed in a pail and scalded, an ordinary teakettle- 

 ful of water is required to make a pailful. The mixing 

 may be done either with a heavy iron cooking spoon or 



ADULT STOCK WILL THRIVE IN BARE YARDS WHERE OTHER CONDITIONS ARE RIGHT 



This flock has a roomy house with scratching quarters underneath, and the relatively small yard drains well away 

 from the building-. In the distance the young stock may be seen on good grass range. 



37 



