58 EXPERIMENT STATION. [Jan. 



published in a bulletin which will be issued in the near future. 

 I call attention here, therefore, only to what seem to be some 

 of the more important practical conclusions. In estimating the 

 reliability of these conclusions, it should be remembered that 

 they are based upon results (on the whole in exact agreement 

 throughout) which have been obtained in these long-continued 

 experiments. These practical conclusions are as follows : — 



1 . When fat is abundant in the rations used in feeding fowls, a 

 satisfactory egg product can be obtained by the use chiefly of 

 grains which are relatively low in protein and high in carbohy- 

 drates. This means that corn may safely constitute a large 

 proportion of the grain fed to laying fowls, and that it is not 

 necessary, in order to secure a satisfactory egg product, to pay 

 the higher prices usually demanded for wheat. It seems wiser 

 to depend chiefly upon animal foods, such as beef scraps of 

 good quality, to supply a fairly liberal proportion of protein 

 and to enrich the ration in fat, using corn in connection with 

 the scraps as the chief whole grain. A little wheat may be 

 desirable, for the sake of variety, but to feed wheat as a source 

 of protein seems unnecessary. Vegetable protein is not equal 

 in value for egg production to protein derived from animal 

 substances. 



2. If, on the other hand, the combination of feeds used is 

 low in fat, then a ration which furnishes abundant protein will 

 prove considerably superior to one low in protein. If, for ex- 

 ample, a dried animal meal from which the fat has been largely 

 extracted, or such material as milk meal (milk albumen) made 

 by the evaporation to dryness of separator skimmed milk low 

 in fat, be used as sources of animal protein, then the combina- 

 tion of foods, including wheat in large quantity and therefore 

 supplying protein in relative abundance, will give more eggs 

 than a combination of foods in which corn, which furnishes less 

 protein, is the principal grain. It has been clearly shown in 

 investigations with domestic animals that in the process of 

 digestion and assimilation the protein of the food may undergo 

 changes resulting in the production of fat. If, as seems prob- 

 able, the laws controlling metabolism in the digestive and as- 

 similative processes of our domestic fowls are similar to those 

 in the larger domestic animals, we find in this fact an explana- 



