PRACTICAL FEEDING OF POULTRY 



13 which may be made of any size desired. This is 

 merely an open box arrangement with a slat follower 

 laid on top of the mash. The holes in the slat follower 

 should be 2 inches .square and the follower should be 2 

 inches narrower than the dimensions of the inside of the 

 box. A convenient sized hopper for a small pen is a box 

 1 8 inches square and 10 inches deep while for a larger pen 

 a long narrow box, one 3 or 4 feet long, 18 inches wide 

 and 10 or 12 inches deep is very .satisfactory. Such a 

 hopper is absolutely wasteproof and the feed is always 

 available to the hens. In wet weather where the yards are 

 very muddy the hens may track some of the mud into 

 this hopper, making this style of hopper slightly objec- 

 tionable. On light soil or where the hens are kept con- 

 fined in a house so that there is little or no opportunity 

 for mud to get into the box, a hopper of this kind is very 

 satisfactory. 



Another style of indoor dry mash hopper which is 

 shown on page 232 makes a good type of wall or room 

 hopper which has a storage feeding arrangement whereby 

 the mash comes down to the hens as it is eaten out of 

 the hopper. The difficulty with this type of hopper is to 

 have the mash flow freely and still not come down so 

 fast that the hens can dig it out of the feeding part of the 

 hopper and waste the mash. A curved metal bottom used 

 on this hopper makes the grain flow freely and having 

 an opening on either .side of the hopper largely eliminates 

 the possibility of the grain choking so that it stops flow- 

 ing freely in the box. A hopper of this type can be made 



231 



