FEEDING FOR EGG PRODUCTION 



81 



Difficulties of Feeding for Eggs in Short Winter Days 



In the summer, when a pullet is doing her growing, 

 the first and last feeds each day may be twelve to four- 

 teen hours apart, and even when the days are not at the 

 longest she can be feeding at some time in more 

 than h#lf of the twenty-four hours. But in the short 

 winter days it becomes difficult sometimes to get m 

 three meals a day, giving the hen feed enough for main- 

 tenance and egg production, and at the same time giving 

 her a fair amount of exercise and keeping her in good 

 appetite for every feed. There are often not more than 

 eight hours that the hen can see to eat. If the weather 

 is generally fair and bright, so that the birds get all the 

 light there is, it is not so bad; but when there is much 

 stormy and dull weather it is pretty hard for the poultry 

 keeper to keep pullets laying, and harder to start those 

 that have not begun to lay, or that began and then stopped. 



Any method that will either lengthen the day, so that 

 the hens can eat and digest a larger amount of feed; or 

 that will conserve the heat of the body or the energies of 

 the hen that what feed she takes will go farther or that 

 will supply an extraordinary amount of nourishment, will 

 help to increase egg production at this* season. Lighting 

 poultry houses was tried long ago, though not on the 

 same scal-e, nor with the provision for as thorough light- 

 ing as in recent years. Heating poultry houses keeping 

 the hens warm, both by the use of stoves and by pro- 

 viding roosting closets in which the heat of their own 

 bodies keeps the temperature comfortable, has often been 

 tried and sometimes with remarkably good results for 

 the time being. Keeping the hens confined close enough 

 to keep them nice and warm however, has a tendency to 

 make them soft and especially susceptible to colds and 

 roup, and if they lay well enough to justify the cost and 

 trouble of keeping them warm and adjusting ventilation 

 day by day with the greatest of care, they are likely to 

 lose a good deal of vitality, and to be such indifferent 

 layers in the latter part of the season that nothing was 

 gained by forcing them at first 



Birds that are to be bred from the following season 

 ought not to be forced for egg* production early in the 

 winter. If they lay well without any unusual measures 

 the best policy is for the poultry keeper to feed them 

 well, and when the breeding season approaches go over 

 them carefully and take for the breeding pens only those 

 birds that seem vigorous and thrifty, and are in good con- 

 dition after having laid well in the early winter. Birds 

 that are not to be used for breeding may be forced as 

 much as desired and as they will stand, and it may pay 

 the poultry keeper to do so if when he does it he will 

 recognize that in all ordinary stocks, hens that are forced 

 in eaily and midwinter are not apt to be profitable layers 

 toward the end of the laying season. 



Where a poultry keeper has a large stock and wants 

 to have his supply of market eggs as constant as possi- 

 ble throughout the year, it is a good plan 'to take the 

 pullets that he regards as second grade for layers, and 

 not desirable for breeders and, taking any means that will 

 give the results, force them for laying throughout the 

 winter, and as soon as they begin to slack up or to go 

 off their feed, sell them for poultry. A further advantage 

 of this plan is that it provides for using both the stock 

 and the equipment to the best possible advantage. Every 

 poultry house and plant can carry more adult fowls 

 through the winter than it can properly accommodate m 

 warm weather. A breeder-fancier goes into the winter 

 with his houses crowded, and by spring his sales of stock 

 will have taken out the excess over the proper capacity 



of the houses in warm weather. Most commercial egg 

 farmers try to stock to full capacity at the beginning of 

 winter, and dispose of the poorer looking hens in each 

 house as warm weather approaches, all having been 

 handled the same through the winter. To separate those 

 that are to be sold at the beginning of warm weather, 

 and feed them to get the most eggs in winter, is to apply 

 the same principle in feeding pullets for a short period 

 of laying that we apply in finishing market poultry. 



What can be done to secure good egg production in 

 short winter days, by special feeding methods, depends 

 upon how closely the hens can be looked after, and upon 

 the skill of the poultry keeper. A person who can carry 

 out fully and regularly a program of feeding that gives 

 a fairly good meal early in the morning, never lets them 

 get really hungry at any time through the day, sees that 

 they get a fair amount of succulent feed at least several 

 times a week, and sends them to roost every night with 

 all crops full AND WHO ALWAYS DOES THIS, will 

 get eggs in the short days from hens that are in the right 

 condition for laying. But to do it he will feed in a man- 

 ner that after a few months begins to break the hens 

 down. 



The writer has known poultry keepers who always 

 got good egg yields through the winter were never 

 known to fail. They all went on the principle that the 

 way to get eggs was to feed the hens all they could 

 eat of good, substantial rations. Most of them had a 

 good deal of trouble trying to raise cjiickens from their 

 laying stock, and depended on eggs from other flocks to 

 produce most of their pullets each year; but give them 

 pullets at or near matuiity at the beginning of winter, 

 and they would get eggs right along, and they would 

 do it simply by regular care and heavy feeding. The 

 poultry keeper who was most successful through the long- 

 est period (in nearly thirty years he was not known to 

 miss) fed a warm mash in the morning. If the mash 

 would not freeze he put enough in the troughs to give 

 the hens all they would eat until noon. Then about the 

 middle of the afternoon he put their grain ration in the 

 same troughs, giving all he thought they would eat be- 

 fore dark, and if the grain was cleaned up earlier, more 

 was given. In the mornings when mash would freeze in 

 the troughs he fed what would be cleaned up before it 

 could freeze, and then fed again toward noon. He gave 

 steamed clover in the mash, or fed cabbage or mangels 

 shortly after noon. 



His neighbors who were less successful used to say 

 that he spent more time beside the fire at the grocery 

 store a mile away than any other farmer in the vicinity, 

 yet his hens laid when others did not. The writer re- 

 peated this to him once, and asked him how he accounted 

 for it. He apparently did not at first relish the refer- 

 ence to his loafing habit, but after a moment laughed 

 good-naturedly and replied: "Well, maybe I do put in 

 more time at the store than some of the others; but I can 

 say one thing for myself that can't be said for any of 

 them. No one ever saw me at the store when there was 

 work that ought to be done for the hens at home. My 

 hens never missed a meal because I had something else 

 on my mind. And I never tried to find out how little a 

 hen could live on. You can't get something from noth- 

 ing. If you want a hen to lay, you got to feed her: same 

 as with getting milk from a cow." 



This man was not a good all-round poultryman, he 

 had his limitations but he could get eggs in the short 

 days of winter, and he did it by feeding well and never 

 allowing anything to interfere with feeding at the reg- 



