94 



HOW TO FEED POULTRY FOR ANY PURPOSE WITH PROFIT 



at the end of a week, they are getting their accustomed 

 allowance. 



Birds that are overfat when returned from a show 

 should be put at once on a diet of hard grain and suc- 

 culent green feed, giving little corn, and making them 

 work a reasonable amount for the light feeds of other 

 grains necessary to put the digestive organs in good con- 

 dition while the birds are reducing weight and getting ii> 

 trim again. 



Experience shows that full return to good breeding 

 condition and fertility usually takes several weeks, and in 

 many individual cases may take several months. It ap- 

 pears to be largely a question of how sensitive a bird is 

 to change, excitement, and irregular life, and of the extent 

 to which it has been shown. Neither the looses and ac- 

 tions of the birds nor the egg production of the hens 

 will show with certainty when they are in good breeding 

 condition again. The test is the fertility of the eggs and 

 the vitality of the chickens hatched, and this appears to 

 be associated with and dependent in part upon conditions 

 of the nervous system and of the reproductive organs that 

 continue to affect the breeding power of a bird sometimes 

 long after it appears to ordinary observation to be in 

 perfect physical condition. 



Feeding Bantams 



The size of a bantam is determined primarily by 

 selection in breeding, but may be influenced considerably 

 by feeding. In nearly all bantams the object is to have 

 the birds as small as possible, yet with the type of the 



large breed of which they are miniature reproductions. 

 The development of the appropriate type is much influ- 

 enced by conditions. In all but the Cochin and Brahma 

 Bantams the best chickens are grown, and the breed type 

 well preserved when the birds are at liberty on a good 

 range, and given no feed but a little tine chick feed only 

 enough to insure that they will be well nourished. Grow- 

 ing the Asiatic Bantams in this way usually results in 

 making the birds too slender in form, a little too high on 

 the legs, too long in the neck, and too active to show 

 good type. There is also a tendency to shorter and less 

 profuse feathering when the birds range much. The best 

 way to grow this type is in grass yards that give 'plenty 

 of green feed and animal feed, yet limit the ranging and 

 the activities of the chicks, and to feed them about as 

 other chicks are fed, except that only fine grains should 

 be used, and comparatively lit f .le soft t\e 1 . The fino 

 commercial chick feeds generally are splendid feeds for 

 bantams. 



Starving or very short feeding to reduce size will 

 keep down weight but is apt to spoil type in any breed, 

 and certain to prevent the production of the finest qual- 

 ity in color of plumage. It also greatly reduces the vital- 

 ity of the birds and this, no doubt, is the cause of ex- 

 ceptional delicacy in many stocks of bantams. The best 

 breeders of bantam* now follow the policy of feeding for 

 fair development of body with good quality in plumage 

 color, and consider the production of a proportion of 

 birds that are overlarge as less objectionable than to 

 have all birds small and all more or less defective in 

 plumage. 



YOUNG BIRDS MAKE THEIR BEST DEVELOPMENT UNDER THESE CONDITIONS 



