208 POULTRY CULTURE 



them at all. Good judgment in selecting birds to be fed for a 

 special purpose is the prime thing in feeding for that purpose. 



In common practice, feeding poultry is simple, easy work. The 

 best feeding is, in fact, so simple that the most of those who 

 undertake to feed correctly and fail, do so because they make the 

 work unnecessarily complicated, and rely too much on their own 

 understanding of the science of feeding and too little on the 

 natural capacity of the birds to balance their own rations. Given 

 normal, healthy, rugged birds and favorable conditions, a bright 

 child of ten, sufficiently interested in a flock of poultry to give it 

 regular attention, can feed it as well as any one. On the other 

 hand, when debilitated stock is kept under unnatural conditions, 

 all the knowledge of foods and all the skill and ingenuity in 

 feeding that can be applied may be needed to get the same 

 results. 1 



Methods of feeding are determined by foods, conditions, objects. 

 General practice in any line of poultry feeding comes ultimately to 

 the cheapest foods and the simplest methods that can be used. 



Foods. When the work is actually on an economic basis, the 

 greater part of the rations used for poultry in any locality is deter- 

 mined by supplies in that locality, either the surplus suitable for 

 poultry food produced there or the surplus shipped in from other 

 sections. The available foods are not always those which give 

 absolutely the best results, but they usually give the greatest profits. 



Conditions affecting feeding require as much consideration as 

 the composition of the ration. When the birds are kept under such 

 conditions that they secure a part of their food for themselves, the 

 kind and quantity thus secured have to be considered in deciding 

 what food shall be given them. When conditions are such that they 

 secure little or no food by foraging, it may be necessary to devise 

 methods of feeding which will insure the normal exercise of the 

 functions of or relating to nutrition. It is this incidental service, 

 and not any special virtue in the feature or method, which gives 



1 To any one familiar with the practice of many poultry keepers under many 

 conditions this seems the best explanation of the fact that many flocks do 

 require very careful attention. Birds bred for generations under highly intensive 

 conditions are, with rare exceptions, so lacking in vitality that feeding them suc- 

 cessfully for any purpose becomes a system of dieting, and the ordinary routine 

 of caring for them is more in the line of nursing than of practical husbandry. 



