1900.] PUBLIC DOCUMENT — No. 33. 49 



of hay and 0.5 ton of rowen per acre ; plot 2, which re- 

 ceived bone and potash, yielded 2.289 tons of hay and 0.479 

 ton of rowen ; plot 3, which received ashes this year, 

 yielded 1.58 tons of hay and 0.33 ton of rowen per acre. 

 The field has now been eleven years in grass, and during the 

 continuance of the present system of manuring (since 1893) 

 has produced an average product (hay and rowen both in- 

 cluded) at the rate of 6,630 pounds per acre. The plots 

 when dressed with manure have averaged 7,027 pounds 

 per acre; when receiving bone and potash, 6,568 pounds 

 per acre ; and when receiving wood ashes, 6,294 i)ounds per 

 acre. 



Poultry Experiments. 



In experiments completed since our last annual report 

 our attention has been confined exclusively to one point, 

 viz., the comparison of a wide nutritive ration with a nar- 

 row ration for egg-production ; or, in other words, of a 

 ration in which corn meal and corn were prominent with 

 one in which these feeds were replaced with more nitrog- 

 enous foods, such as wheat middlings, wheat and oats. 

 So much greater is the cost of wheat than that of corn, that 

 it seemed desirable to o])tain as much evidence bearing upon 

 their relative value for egg-production as possible at an early 

 day. If the latter grain should, on further trial, prove so 

 much superior to wheat as our experiments in 1898 indi- 

 cated, the knowledge of the fact must prove of enormous 

 value. Accordingly, we reared on the scattered colony plan 

 well-bred pullets of the White \yyandotte. Black Minorca 

 and Barred Plymouth Rock breeds, planning to have two 

 houses (one on each feed) with twenty fowls each of each 

 breed. In introducing purchased cockerels for breeding 

 purposes late in the winter we unfortunately carried con- 

 tagion, and an obscure form of what is commonly called 

 roup broke out in such aggravated form among the Black 

 jNIinorcas, that, fearing infection of the fowls in other houses, 

 we killed all the Minorcas. The test with this breed was 

 not, therefore, at all conclusive, and details will not l)e pub- 

 lished. Up to the time the test was closed, however, the 

 corn-fed Minorcas had laid about fifty per cent, more eggs 

 than the others. 



