AMERICAN POULTRY CULTURE 



time the fowls can get absolutely no food, for weeks 

 at a time, except that which is supplied by the 

 attendant. Mix all the table scraps in with the 

 mash or feed them separately in troughs; nothing 

 better could be served by way of variety. Apple 

 parings and potato parings are also good and 

 usually available every day or two. Cooked tur- 

 nips and beets are good, and so are pumpkins 

 and squashes; in fact, almost anything that the 

 birds will relish. I have all egg shells crushed and 

 fed to our hens, as they will supply the material 

 with which to make more shells, but we are care- 

 ful to see that they are broken into very fine bits, 

 so that their use will not teach the fowls the egg- 

 eating habit. 



It is the busy hen that lays the greatest number 

 of eggs. I find that one of the best and most prac- 

 tical ways to give chickens interesting work while 

 confined to the house in winter is to supply them 

 with some unthreshed grain in the sheaves. Oats, 

 wheat, buckwheat, and millet are excellent, but 

 any small grain that the fowls like will do quite 

 as well. In the fall I always see that we get stored 

 away enough unthreshed grain to enable us to 

 supply one or two bundles to every twenty or thirty 

 of our hens each day that the weather is such that 

 the fowls are kept confined to the house. 



What to do when it snows or rains is a perplex- 

 ing problem to many beginners in poultry culture. 



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