42 



houses and fowls free from vermin. The latter have in general been 

 healthy, although in a few instances they have suffered somewhat 

 from roup or roupy colds. The doors in the south side of the 

 scratching shed have been kept open winter as well as summer, save 

 when a storm prevailed which drove into it. 



The fowls used in these experiments were invariably selected late 

 in the fall, and were usually kept until about the middle of the fol- 

 lowing autumn. The experiment, while usually, of the same nature 

 as affecting any given houses throughout the year, was in most cases 

 divided into two periods, winter and summer, the former usually ex- 

 tending from the time when the experiment was begun, as a rule in 

 December, until early in April ; the summer period from that date 

 until sometime in October in most cases. In some of our experi- 

 ments the egg product has been too small to be satisfactory. This 

 has usually been due to the fact that the pullets were hatched late or 

 were of a late maturing strain, and that the fowls were kept a num- 

 der of weeks in the autumn after they began to molt, the object of 

 so doing being to observe whether the system of feeding followed 

 affected the molt. When the pullets have been early hatched or of 

 an early maturing strain, and when the experiment had not been 

 continued after the molt began in the autumn, the egg product has 

 been satisfactory, in view of the fact that the fowls are kept in such 

 close confinement. 



Except in those experiments, few in number. 

 Methods of where the time of giving the different feeds was 



Feeding Followed, the subject of inquiry, the methods of feeding 

 have been as follows : Early in the morning, 

 a slightly moist, crumbly mash is fed. This includes all the ground 

 grains and by-products and the animal food which has been used. 

 In some cases this mash has been mixed with boiling water the 

 evening before. In other cases, it has been mixed with moderately 

 warm water in the morning and immediately given. If the grains in 

 use include small as well as large kinds, the smaller grains have 

 usually been fed for the most part at noon, being scattered in the 

 litter. The larger grains, or in cases where there has been no differ- 

 ence, rather more than one-half the total amount of dry grains fed 

 has been scattered in the litter about an hour before dark. In feed- 

 ing, we have aimed to give all the food the fowls would consume 

 without loss of appetite and keen relish for their rations, and it has 



