26 GENERAL MANAGEMENT OF POULTRY. 



will not alone keep the fowls in good health and laying. They 

 are omnivorous in their natural state, and require some portion 

 of animal food. On a wide range they will provide this for 

 themselves, and in such an establishment as figures at page 

 9, the scraps of the dinner-table will be quite sufficient ; but 

 if the number kept be large, with only limited accommodation, 

 it will be necessary to buy every week a few pennyworth of 

 bullocks' liver, which may be boiled, chopped fine, and mixed 

 in their food, the broth being used instead of water in mixing ; 

 these little tit-bits will be eagerly picked out and enjoyed. A 

 very little is all that is necessary, and need not be given more 

 than three times a week. When fowls are much over-fed with 

 this kind of food the quills of the feathers become more or less 

 charged with blood, which the birds in time perceive, and 

 almost invariably pluck at each other's plumage till they leave 

 the skin quite bare. It is also necessary to give a caution 

 against the use of greaves. When fowls are habitually fed 

 upon this article their feathers speedily become disarranged 

 and fall off, and when killed the flavour, to any ordinary 

 palate, is disagreeable. 



There is yet another most important article of diet, without 

 which it is absolutely impossible to keep fowls in health. We 

 refer to an ample and daily supply of green or fresh vegetable 

 food. It is not perhaps too much to say, that the omission of 

 this is the proximate cause of nearly half the deaths where 

 fowls are kept in confinement ; whilst with it, our other 

 directions having been observed, they may be kept in health 

 for a long time in a pen only a few feet square. It was to 

 provide this that, wherever they are large enough, we recom- 

 mended the open yards, when possible, to be laid down in 

 grass the very best green food for poultry ; and a run of even 

 an hour daily on such a grass plot, supposing the shed to be 

 dry and clean, will keep them in vigorous health. But if a 

 shed only be available, fresh vegetables must be thrown in 



