THE MOULTING SEASON 113 



really much less than usual, you will fail in getting an early moult. 



This low feeding or starving process as it is called by many, 

 is the important factor in the forced moult. Unless you really do 

 this in good shape the birds will continue to lay and will shed theii 

 feathers in mid-autumn. 



Handle your birds on the roost to test their weight. They must 

 be thin in body, yet good in color of comb and wattles. I find that 

 birds take from fourteen to twenty-one days to get real thin. You 

 will notice as you put this plan into practice that the egg yield will 

 drop off until no eggs are being laid ; that the birds are on the run 

 all the day long, coming to meet you at any point of the fence you 

 may approach. The birds show that they miss some of their usual 

 food. This thinning will do no harm to the birds; in fact it adds 

 to the health of the birds for months to come. 



The Full Ration 



When the birds have lost all superfluous flesh, when the eggs 

 have ceased to appear for a week, feed them good, full rations of 

 growing foods. Now is when you add meat, beef scraps, green 

 bone, cornmeal, and linseed meal. You can give them a morning 

 meal of two parts cornmeal, three parts bran, one part beef scrap. 

 At noon feed a small handful of wheat or barley to every bird and 

 at night a full feed of wheat or corn. Do not neglect to furnish full 

 supplies of green food and vegetables all the fall. 



The change from the low feed to the full rations will be followed 

 by the rapid dropping of feathers. The feathers will fall off all over 

 the birds so that many of them will be almost naked. This result 

 will be seen in most of the birds- A few will fail to respond, more 

 if you do not follow the plan as outlined. 



Keep the full feed up until the birds get the new coat of feathers 

 and begin to lay a few eggs. Then feed them as you do the fully 

 mature pullets ; avoid feeding of heating foods (corn and corn prod- 

 ucts) lest you start another moult in the late autumn. 



The forced moult is ONLY FOR MATURED FOWLS, or 

 fowls that are over a year old. You must not starve the pullets. 

 You must keep them growing. They will stand more heating food 

 than hens. Let the pullets do most of your winter laying, but do 

 not neglect anything that will induce the older birds to give you a 

 good share in the profits of winter eggs. 



To sum up the whole matter in a few words, if you want to has- 

 ten the moult, do not try the experiment with all your fowls, but 

 take a few, separate them from the others, and about the middle 

 or end of August commence to shorten their food. You can do this 

 suddenly, giving them only green food and all the green feed they 

 want. Secondly, keep this green feed up for two or three weeks, 

 or at least one week after they have stopped laying. Thirdly, the 

 green food should be clover, lawn clippings, alfalfa hay cut in a 

 clover-cutter and soaked in water; beet tops, cabbage, lettuce, etc. 

 Fourthly, after the three weeks' fast, feed rich food, fattening food, 

 sunflower seeds, kaffir corn, wheat, barley, oats and meat. Fifthly, 



