CHAPTER XIII 



Growing Feed for Poultry 



At Present Prices the Collectible Manure Made by a Single Medium-Sized Fowl is Worth Fully Fifty Cents a Year 

 The Poultry Keeper Should Always Plan to Have Enough Ground Under Cultivation to Utilize 

 This Valuable Fertilizer Green Feed for the Fowls Should Be Provided, if Nothing 

 Else What Crops to Plant and How to Grow Them Successfully 



A BACK- YARD poultry keeper whose small flocic 

 occupies all the land he can use for poultry or 

 planting is not interested in the question of 

 growing feed for poultry; but to every poultry keeper who 

 has more land than that the question is one of great im- 

 portance. It is not merely a question of supplying feed 

 for the birds though that is a consideration. The root 

 of the matter lies deeper. The droppings of poultry are a 

 valuable fertilizer for plant growth, but under some con- 

 ditions become noxious poison to poultry. Everyone who 

 keeps fowls has to consider how to dispose of the drop- 

 pings to the best advantage. 



Many poultry keepers far too many are accustomed 

 to treating the droppings as so much worthless refuse that 

 must be go* rid of with the least possible trouble and ex- 

 pense. Amazing as it may seem to those who know some- 

 thing of the fertilizing value of poultry manure, in dis- 

 tricts where there is much intensive poultry keeping 

 enormous quantities of hen manure are annually buried 

 in public dumps with ashes and all kinds of refuse, or 

 piled up in out-of-the-way spots on poultry farms, or per- 

 haps used for grading and filling. 



A part of this waste has sometimes seemed unavoid- 

 able. For instance, the land occupied by a certain mar- 

 ket poultry plant upon which large stock of chickens had 

 been grown for many years eventually became so satu- 

 rated with poultry manure that the birds did not thrive 

 on it. Other farms in the vicinity were in much the same 

 state. The district was devoted to poultry to the exclu- 

 sion of most other lines of agriculture; the people were 

 poultrymen, but not farmers. There was no outlet for 

 a surplus of manure within any convenient hauling dis- 

 tance, and hundreds of tons were dumped in a swamp ar 

 the rear of this farm, while in another part of the same 

 state an isolated large poultry plant, in a general farm- 

 ing community, was getting $10.00 a ton, at the plant, for 

 all the poultry manure saved from the droppings boards, 

 and trading off the droppings mixed with litter for new 

 straw litter, load for load. 



There was a time, when there was not so much poul- 

 try kept and when poultry and pigeon manures were ex- 

 tensively used in tanning leather, when the clear manure 

 was always salable at prices which realized as much as 

 its fertilizer value. But that time passed nearly a quar- 

 ter of a century ago. Since then there has been only a 

 limited demand for poultry manure for other than ferti- 

 lizing purposes, and this has been so irregular, and con- 

 fined to so few localities that not one poultry keeper in a 

 hundred could benefit by it. Getting value for poultry 

 manure since the large demand for it for tanning purposes 

 ceased has been a matter of using it to produce feed for 

 poultry. Occasionally one might sell or trade it to ad- 

 vantage, but in general what the poultryman got from 

 the manure was what he could get by using it himself. 



A medium to small-sized fowl (the kind most common 

 throughout the country) makes from \y 2 to 2 bushels of 

 manure a year. About half of this is always collectible. 

 When hens are kept in small yards, or confined entirely 

 to the house, it is practically all collectible, though the 



108 



part not left on the droppings boards is usually much 

 mixed with earth and litter, and its value further reduced 

 by exposure to the air, sun, and rain. Making due allow- 

 ance for some unavoidable waste, there is still the possi- 

 bility of securing and using approximately three-fourths 

 of the value of the fresh manure. This means that from 

 a flock of ten birds about one-third of a ton of manure 

 can be collected in a year. At the present time this should 

 be worth at least five dollars, or fifty cents per bird. 



To lose this value is not a serious thing to the owner 

 of ten birds, but if the owner of a hundred birds loses in 

 the same proportion it is fifty dollars, and if the owner 

 of a flock of a thousand birds fails to realize the value in 

 their manure, it means at least FIVE HUNDRED DOL- 

 LARS taken from his annual income. No one can afford 

 to lose this. A poultry keeper who has more than a little 

 back-yard flock ought always to have land enough to 

 utilize all the manure his poultry make. It is a point 

 of good management to adjust the amount of poultry kept 

 to the land in this way. 



In the smallest yards where poultry are kept and 

 some feed grown for them, the feed should as a rule 

 be some rank growing crop that rapidly utilizes the ferti- 

 lizing elements in the manure. Rape is one of the best 

 plants for small spaces, as it can be sown broadcast to 

 occupy the ground fully, and by cutting the tops at in- 

 tervals and feeding to the poultry it will continue growing, 

 furnishing a regular supply of green feed, and taking up 

 the manurial matter in the soil through the entire season. 

 In planting and using rape in this way particular attention 

 should be given to the physical condition of the land be- 

 fore the seed is put in. The common tendency of amateur 

 gardeners is to rush the preparation of the land to get 

 the seed in as quickly as possible. The experienced gar- 

 dener does not put seed in the ground until it is properly 

 and thoroughly fitted forked or spaded as deep as the 

 character of the soil will permit, well pulverized, and 

 made smooth on the surface. 



If this is not done, the soil but slightly stirred, left 

 lumpy, and with the manure that had accumulated at or 

 near the surface imperfectly mixed with the soil, the con- 

 ditions of good growth are not realized, and the vegeta- 

 ble crop cannot do the service expected of it as quickly 

 or as well as when the land is thoroughly fitted. Land 

 that has not been cultivated for one or more seasons 

 'should be thoroughly worked over twice before seeding. 

 Nothing that can be done to it pays better than the second 

 spading. On plots that are large enough to warrant using 

 hand plows, deep tillage and thorough preparation are 

 secured by running each furrow twice making a furrow 

 and then coming back in it. 



Where there is more land available, a succession of 

 crops that can be cultivated as they grow may be planted. 

 If the idea is to produce feed for poultry only, rape, chard, 

 lettuce, cabbage, and mangel wurzel beets are the most 

 satisfactory crops. In most cases it is desirable to grow 

 some vegetables for the table as well as for the poultry, 

 and where one or two pens of fowls are kept on an ordi- 

 nary town lot there usually is land enough available for 



