POULTRY-CRAFT. 133 



of being over-careful to prevent laying hens walking on and eating snow. It 

 is often said that either of these things will stop laying. To remain long 

 standing on snow, or on wet frozen ground either, undoubtedly has that 

 effect ; so, apparently, has eating snow under some circumstances. Healthy 

 fowls that have dry comfortable quarters to which they go at will, are not 

 injured in the least by being on snow for a little while occasionally. Fowls 

 that can have water to drink when they want it will not hurt themselves 

 eating snow. Indeed, fowls provided with water do not voluntarily eat much 

 snow except when it is thawing, wet ; then they seem to prefer it to water. 



1 76. As the Days Grow Short the old hens are getting well through 

 their moult ; the early pullets are completely feathered, full grown. The 

 food eaten now goes to maintenance, warmth, and eggs ; and, with the full 

 coat of feathers on, the heat of the body is better retained. A given quantity 

 of fuel food will go further in a given atmospheric temperature now than it 

 did earlier ; and if the weather is fine and warm in November, the food needs 

 close watching ; for it is very likely to prove that the hens need less food and 

 less heating food now than they did early in the fall. Now, too, the days are 

 growing so short that it begins to be difficult to get in three meals a day, even 

 if the noon meal is a light one, with intervals between meals long enough to 

 keep the fowls in good appetite. It would seem that fowls need to be up 

 and about for a while before they are ready to eat a breakfast. If at all well 

 fed at night they rarely eat a hearty meal until some little time after sunrise. 

 If the hens will not eat heartily soon after sunrise, the evening feed should be 

 reduced, little by little, until they do. A good way to feed in the short days 

 is when the mash is fed in the morning to give all they will eat clean of 

 a clover or vegetable mash, and scatter millet, or other small grain or broken 

 grain, where they can get it by scratching at any time through the day ; then 

 about three o'clock in the afternoon give a feed of wheat, oats, barley, cracked 

 corn, any one, or a mixture in litter, feeding a little light ; at dusk give 

 whole corn to hens that will leave the roost to get it. As to the quantity of 

 corn to be given, learn to judge that by comparing the appearance of the crop 

 at night and the appetite for mash next morning. When the mash is fed in 

 the evening and vegetables at noon, it is easier to regulate three meals a day. 

 Whether two or three meals are given, the feeder should learn to so regulate 

 the quantity given at each meal that the hens will be ready and waiting for 

 the next. If this is not done, hens soon go "off their feed," though not 

 over-fed. The trouble usually has its origin in allowing the fowls to get too 

 hungry before the evening meal, making them so greedy that when given an 

 opportunity to eat rapidly and heartily they swallow more than they can 

 comfortably digest. By being observant and careful, one soon acquires a 

 knack of feeding about right for quantity, and finds it a much simpler matter 

 than the amount of explanation necessary to make the need of cautious feeding 

 clear would indicate. 



