C HAPTEU T 



General Factors in Poultry Feeding 

 af 



Economic Conditions Determine Methods Increased Use of By-Product Feeds Makes Knowledge of the Science of 

 Feeding Useful to Every Poultry Keeper Nutritive Requirements and Feeding Habits of The Several 

 Kinds of Poultry Comparison of Digestive Organs of Animals and Birds 

 Relations of Art and Craft in Poultry Feeding 



THE aim of this book is 'to give a working know- 

 ledge of the whole subject of poultry feeds and 

 feeding. The conditions of modern life, and the 

 economic developments in poultry culture, and in other 

 interests directly or indirectly related to it, make some 

 acquaintance with the scientific side of the subject essen- 

 tial. A generation ago, under what we have been accus- 

 tomed to call natural conditions of life for them, o; r 

 several kinds of domestic poultry fed themselves, or \ver2 

 fed, almost entirely upon the 

 waste products of farms, 

 and the wastes from the 

 homes and the barns and 

 gardens in the less thickly 

 populated urban districts. 

 What town poultry keepers 

 could not supply their flocks 

 from such sources was made 

 up by purchase of grain 

 from nearby farms. 



In the last thirty years all 

 this has been changed The 

 increasing demand for poul- 

 try and eggs in cities has 

 led to a great increase n 

 the amount of poultry kept 

 in sections where the farmers 

 have no surplus stock feed 

 to sell. At the same time. 

 the increasing use of pre- 

 pared cereals for human 

 food made great supplies of 

 by-products suitable for 

 stock feeding. Such by- 

 products consist of the 

 coarser, less palatable, and 

 least nutritious parts of the 

 grains from which they are 

 derived; or of the residue 

 when a particular food ele- 

 ment is separated from *a 

 certain grain to give a hu- 

 man food having peculiarly 

 desirable properties. T h e 

 profitable use of such by- 

 products in stock feeding is 

 a question of combining 

 them properly with other 

 feeds and of being able to 

 obtain them at least as 

 cheaply as the feed ele- 

 ments they contain could be 

 bought in the cheapest com- 

 mon whole feed article that 

 might be used for the stock 

 to which they are to be fed. 



It follows that the intel- 

 ligent and economical use of 



I. K. FELCH FEEDING A FLOCK OF HIS LIGHT 



BRAHMAS 

 (From a snap-shot by J. H. Robinson, May, 1901) 



I. K. Felch, known as "The Father of Poultry Cul- 

 ture in America", was born in Natick, Mass., January 

 17, 1834, and died there August 31, 1918. From 1846 until 

 his death he was actively interested in poultry culture. 

 The first record of an exhibit of poultry by Mr. Felch, 

 and his first published statement relating to poultry 

 are in the report of the Middlesex South Agricultural 

 Society's Fair at Framingham, Mass., September, 1864, 

 published in "Massachusetts Agriculture, 1864." At this 

 fair he exhibited a cock and four hens. Golden Penciled 

 Hamburgs, which he had imported in 1863, in competi- 

 tion for the premium awarded for best pen of fowls and 

 best statement of their performance for six months pre- 

 ceding- the fair. The part of his statement relating to 

 their production reads: "The fowls have been for most of 

 the time enclosed in a yard, three rods long and one rod 

 wide, and their food has been nothing but corn, with 

 fresh water and oyster shells, at an expense Of $3.75 

 for the five fowls for the six months. The four hens 

 have laid in the six months 472 eggs, and one of the 

 hens has been sick ten weeks of the time, being an aver- 

 age of 118 eggs to each hen. But to give each hen her 

 just merits, we should consider that the sick hen only 

 laid about half as many eggs as each of the others. 

 Allowing her to lay 60 eggs would leave 412 to be laid 

 by the three others being 137 eggs each. One of the 

 hens has in my judgment laid 150 eggs within the past 

 six months. From observations we know that she laid 

 constantly and more than the others." 



these feeds requires some knowledge of the chemical com- 

 position of feed stuffs, and of the scientific principles of 

 feeding. True, the abundance of feeds of this kind has 

 led manufacturers and dealers to give particular atten- 

 tion to the production of commercial mixtures of feed in 

 which these by-products are combined, either with whole 

 feeds or with other by-products, in such proportions that 

 the mixture is equal or superior in value to some com- 

 mon whole feed for which it is offered as a substitute, 



or perhaps is a complete ra- 

 tion for a specific purpose; 

 but even in using these feeds 

 the poultry keeper needs to 

 know something of their 

 composition and of the prop- 

 erties and values of the in- 

 gredients which they contain. 

 He needs this not so much 

 for protection against adul- 

 teration of mixtures by un- 

 s c r u p u 1 ous manufacturers 

 and dealers, as for insurance 

 against the contingency of 

 being unable to obtain sup- 

 plies of a feed that he has 

 been accustomed to us^, and 

 to enable him to combine to 

 the best advantage the use 

 of good commercial mixtures 

 and feeds obtained from 

 other sources. 



The acquaintance with the 

 scientific side of the subject 

 that serves this purpose must 

 be correct as far as it goes, 

 but need not go farther than 

 familiarity with the names 

 and properties of the nutri- 

 ent elements in feeds, their 

 general relations to the nu- 

 tritive requirements of ani- 

 malsparticularly poultry 

 and simple methods of calcu- 

 lating the values of rations. 

 These are in reality matters 

 which under modern condi- 

 tions are no longer peculiar- 

 ly scientific but have become 

 a necessary part of practical 

 common knowledge of feed- 

 ing. For that reason it 

 ,seems best in a popular dis- 

 cussion of the subject to 

 present the rudiments of the 

 science of feeding as a part 

 of the practical statement of 

 the subject, introducing each 

 in its appropriate place in 



the general discussion. 



