FOODS AND FEEDING 



While the writer neither uses nor recommends 

 the free use of mashes for breeding birds, many 

 Use of Mashes good poultrymen do. While hens 

 in Feeding often will lay more eggs when fed 

 freely on soft food than when fed mostly on dry 

 grains, I do not believe the condition either a 

 natural or a strictly healthful one. While there 

 are no objections to feeding mashes to hens that 

 are being forced for heavy egg production in 

 fact, that is the most profitable way to feed stock 

 kept for eggs and eggs alone still the breeder 

 who wants strong, rugged breeding birds, fertile, 

 hatchable eggs, and vigorous, lifeful chicks, had 

 better feed mashes comparatively infrequently 

 say, once or twice a week because dry-feeding 

 is more in harmony with Nature. 



Birds that are being forced for heavy egg pro- 

 duction, and which will be discarded after the first 

 or second season, may be fed a mash every day 

 or even two mashes a day during the season of 

 highest prices for eggs. Breeders who are more 

 solicitous for the constitutions of their fowls, and 

 who want them to remain profitable for two or 

 three years, should confine themselves to no more 

 than four or five mashes a week. The prominent 

 poultrymen who believe in mashes do not feed them 

 to their breeding birds more than two or three times 

 a week, and many only once a week. In general, 

 my advice to the beginner would be to feed mashes 



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