190 SECOND THOUSAND QUESTIONS IN AGRICULTURE 



Skim Milk for Fowls. 



What is the value of skim milk as a poultry feed and best method of 

 feeding? 



After providing for average non-assimilation and deducting the 

 amount necessary for the maintenance of the hen, one hundred 

 pounds of skim milk has an egg producing value of 55 whites and 18.5 

 yolks when fed in a properly balanced ration; these values total 73.5 

 egg maker units. Good meat scrap supplies 1010.5 units and dried 

 ground green bone 536 units, therefore a good commercial meat scrap, 

 that does not carry an excessive amount of bone, is worth about 

 fourteen times as much in feed value as skim milk; on the basis of 

 $3.50 as the price of the meat, the skim milk would be worth 25 cents 

 per hundred pounds. It may be placed before the fowls so they can 

 drink it, but best results usually follow feeding in a mixture of other 

 food stuff; unless quite sweet it is well to make it into cottage cheese 

 and dispose of the whey as waste. Several who have added the whey 

 to the feed report bad results. 



Comb-Crusts From Over-Feeding. 



I have two yards of hens. One has the run of a eucalyptus grove, the 

 other has a peach orchard; both have alfalfa. They are fed egg food, 

 rolled barley, and gyp corn, have sprouted grain in cultivated ground; have 

 been feeding horse meat or mixing mash with the juice; have also fed a 

 good many gophers chopped up raw. Yard one is all right; yard two has 

 a disease of the comb and wattles, which first appears like blisters and a 

 dry crust forms. They do not appear to be very sick ; none have died; why 

 should the clean yard with all clean, healthy birds have it and none of the 

 other yards? 



Your birds have too rich a diet; the comb is not diseased, but 

 is just an outlet. The reason it appears to affect this yard and not 

 the others is that they are strong enough to throw the refuse off 

 through the comb and skin. The others are keeping it inside, and if 

 you do not stop some of the meat and raw gophers you will have liver 

 trouble with the other yards, while this yard will be exempt. In the 

 first place, the egg food is rich enough of itself; then you add prob- 

 ably an equal quantity of nitrogenous food, and the fowls cannot 

 use so much. Give the hens a good cathartic, such as epsom salts. 



Possible 111 in Rolled Barley. 



/ am losing hens which look well and are sick only a few hours. When 

 they die they are wet around the vent. I feed mostly rolled barley. 



It may be that the rolled barley has set up an irritation in the 

 crop or intestines, which runs a quick course. Rolled barley should 

 be soaked a few hours to take the sting out of the beards. Com- 

 plaints are always numerous when a good deal of dry rolled barley is 

 fed and there have been many losses. 



