POULTRY FATTENING IN SUSSEX. 89 



fat, melted and mixed with the food. Sometimes fine 

 barley-meal is used for a portion of the food. In France 

 fine barley-meal and buckwheat-meal is the chief staple,* 

 often with some maize-meal, but also mixed with milk and 

 more or less fat. To keep the blood cool it is customary in 

 France to add chopped boiled nettles two or three times a 

 week. Some Surrey feeders use a portion of bran with the 

 same idea, but the green stuff seems far the best method, 

 though more adapted to small operators like the majority of 

 French fatters than to gigantic establishments such as 

 Mr. Oliver's. 



The last week or teri days, when the birds cease to 

 " feed " heartily or make evident progress that way, they 

 are crammed. This has been done in three ways. The 

 food may be mixed into stiff paste and rolled into sticks, 

 cut into lengths about the size and two-thirds the length of 

 the little finger. These are dipped into milk or whey and 

 passed down the gullet till enough has been given. Or the 

 food is mixed " thin," about the consistency of thick cream, 

 and given through a funnel, the end of which is blunted 

 and guarded by india-rubber to avoid injuring the gullet. 

 The first of these used to be the usual plan in England, and 

 the second in France ; but of late both have been more or 

 less superseded by the third plan of administering the food 

 by cramming machines, in which a large cylindrical reservoir 

 is filled with the same semi-liquid food used in funnelling, 

 which is forced out by a piston through a rubber tube 

 passed down the gullet of the bird. The first machines 



*A writer already alluded to has also been very sarcastic upon the 

 subject of barley-meal, which, he affirms, is never used by "any practical 

 fatter." It is a fact that the French do use it largely, and Sussex fatters to 

 a less extent. But it is finely-sifted good meal, with most of the fibre 

 sifted out. And the French combine it with the cooling ingredients above 

 mentioned. 



