254 POULTRY BREEDING AND MANAGEMENT 



beef scrap may be kept before them all the time. This will 

 insure that they get enough of tlie animal food. 



Cut Bones may be fed every day, or three times a week, 

 as much as the fowls will clean up in 15 minutes. Three to 

 four ounces per hen per week is about right. More will 

 be consumed during heavy laying than at other times. 



Cooking Food. It does not pay usually to cook feeds. 

 Most feeds give better results when fed raw. Starchy 

 feeds, such as potatoes, are improved by cooking, but usually 

 it is better not to cook feeds. In feeding raw meat foods, 

 there is some danger of the fowls contracting disease. If 

 liver or lights are fed, they should be boiled to kill any 

 disease germs there may be in them. Digestion experiments 

 at Geneva (New York Report, 1885), show that the digesti- 

 bility of the protein in several of the common stock feeds 

 was injured by cooking. 



Hopper Feeding. There are two fundamental consider- 

 ations in methods of feeding. The first is the method of 

 weighing out at each feeding a certain definite amount of 

 feed. The second allows the hen herself to make good from 

 the hopper any lack of nutrients of any particular kind. 

 The writer believes it imperative that the hen be allowed 

 considerable latitude in satisfying her wants and in making 

 good any shortage of at least the mineral and animal feed 

 in the ration. It is not conceivable that in a flock of one 

 hundred hens where the individual egg production varies, 

 as we know it does, the same amount and kind of feed will 

 satisfy all of them. The heavy producer requires more of 

 the animal protein foods and more of the mineral, and the 

 only practicable method is to furnish those nutrients 

 ad libitum to the flock. 



No Hard and Fast Rules. In what has gone before the 

 attempt has been made to give to the reader in concise form 

 information in regard to the general principles of feeding, 



