152 FIRST LESSONS IN FOULTBY KEEPING. 



exercise enough to keep it in healthy condition through its short life. They give it 

 abundance of food. The food is always before it. They give it opportunity to go 

 quite a distance, and trust to the abundance of food to restrain its inclination to 

 wander, while the opportunity to move about is relied upon to induce it to take exer- 

 cise enough to keep it from going out of condition before it is marketed. 

 This principle, rule, or method, whichever we call it, is perhaps no better in results in 

 poultry than some of the more elaborate ones, but it certainly produces a fine article at the 

 minimum cost for food and attendance. It should be noted that it is the object of these 

 growers to produce chickens in which the meat has always been soft. Their method does not 

 contemplate improving the quality of a hard mealed fowl by softening hard muscles, and inter- 

 spersing them with fat. With them the fattening is strictly a finishing process intended to be 

 carried only as far as necessary to furnish the fat to cook the meat on the fowl. 



The Next Step Toward Special Fattening. 



The soft roaster growers, as a rule, intend all their chickens, cockerels, (caponized), and 

 pullets alike for market. Their system, as generally operated, does not produce the largest 

 possible chicken from the possibilities with which they start. There is no need that it should, 

 for the method they use gives them chickens large enough for the general demand. But, when 

 a poultryman is growing stock in which the different sexes, or birds of different quality are to 

 be devoted to different purposes, this method does not apply so well. The object, then, is to 

 build up good strong, vigorous, and usually, too, large bodies; and this must apply to all the 

 stock, for not until mature, or nearly so, can the selection of individuals for the different pur- 

 poses be made. Chickens handled for this purpose for many months would not readily adapt 

 themselves to the method of heavy feeding and reduced activity. They would come to it in 

 time with the inducements it offers them, but when a poultryman has reached the point of 

 culling out the chickens that are to go to market, he usually wants to fit them for market, and 

 dispose of them as quickly as possible. To accomplish this he confines them somewhat closely, 

 mid feeds more heavily and more fattening foods. 



In the case of partly grown chickens of the small and medium sized breeds, this kind of 

 forcing is likely to give temporarily very rapid growth with a slight accumulation of fat. I 

 used to take Plymouth Rock, Wyandotte, and Buff Leghorn chicks, weighing a pound to a 

 pound and a quarter each, confine them in lots of about forty, in pens 8 ft. square, with yards 

 containing about 300 sq. ft., and feed heavily on corn cake, wheat, and cracked corn, and put 

 eight ounces of weight on each of them in a week. This was my system of handling chicks to 

 dress for broilers. If my orders for broilers left any to grow a little too large for that purpose 

 they were kept under about the same conditions perhaps a little more exercise and more 

 variety of food for a few weeks, then again given a week of finishing to fit them for " frys," 

 and at this second fattening they generally put on much more fat. 



The method luse at present is more particularly adapted to older fowls, though it slightly 

 improves the condition of those taken from the yard to be killed for our own table at a stage at 

 which they do not readily fatten. 



When cockerels are well grown, I plan to have a few fattening all the time until all destined 

 for the table have been used. They are simply shut in a small pen or coop, fed mash the same 

 as the rest of the stock once a day, and for the rest have cracked corn and water before them 

 all the time. On this treatment most of them will fatten as fast as we care to have them, in 

 from one to two weeks, the average being about ten days. If it should happen that any are 

 not killed within two weeks we are quite sure of finding them overfat. 



These chickens are full fed and in good condition before being shut up. I think they will 

 run a little harder meated than the soft roasters, as grown by the South Shore method, but 

 there are many specimens just as soft, and the average is very much better than that of 

 ordinary good table poultry. 



Other Simple flethods. 



When a very rapid increase of fat is desired, and especially when the chickens to be fattened 

 are a little lacking in condition, the fattening process may be hastened in various ways. 



