THE SEASONS AS AFFECTING POULTRY 



ging around in the straw, and this starts up the 

 circulation of the blood and keeps them from 

 moping around and becoming chilled. 



When the night is going to be extremely cold, 

 corn makes an elegant evening feed for the fowls. 

 When it is thoroughly warmed, the fowls relish it 

 more than any other grain that could be fed, and a 

 crop full of warm corn is a comfortable thing for a 

 hen to go to bed with on a cold night, as the grain 

 by nature is heating and will help the hen to main- 

 tain her bodily warmth during the night. Once a 

 week put some shelled corn in a pan and char it in 

 the oven, and let this compose a large part of your 

 fowls 1 supper ; it helps in varying the diet, and the 

 charring produces a tonic effect. 



Mangel wurzels are one of the best, or quite 

 the best, vegetable food that can be given to fowls 

 during the winter. Cabbage is excellent, but fowls 

 relish it somewhat less than mangolds, and, besides, 

 a continued diet of cabbage or onions will invari- 

 ably impart a disagreeable flavor to the eggs laid 

 by the fowls to which they were fed, while mangel 

 wurzels never have this effect. They are easily 

 kept in any root house or cellar where there is 

 no danger of freezing. When fed, suspend them 

 in the air so that the birds will have to jump a few 

 inches to reach them. This may be accomplished 

 by sticking them on nails in the walls of the house. 



Any seedsman can supply you with mangel wur- 

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