18 



BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



fiber. Therefore, in feeding, we should be careful not to over- 

 load our mashes, or rations, with so much of this fiber-laden 

 material that the hen's digestive powers will be overtaxed. 



Table 5. — Amount of Droppings voided relative to Time of feeding 



Wet Mash. 



The data of this chart were taken from bulletin 122 of 

 our own station, published a number of years ago but now 

 out of print. This is the result of an experiment carried on 

 by Dr. Brooks, and its object was to determine the difference 

 in weight of droppings voided by hens fed at night on a 

 wet mash and on a whole grain ration. The first column 

 shows the dates ; the second, the number of days' droppings 

 gathered ; the third, the number of hens on the roost, or, as 

 the chart puts it, the number of hen nights ; i.e., on March 5 

 the droppings were left for two days, so the number of hens 

 were doubled to give the number of hen nights. In the 

 fourth column we find the weight of the droppings. Columns 

 5 and 6 contain data similar to those of 3 and 4, except 

 that the hens in those pens were fed a wet mash in the evening, 

 whereas the data in columns 3 and 4 are from pens containing 

 hens fed mash in the morning and whole grains at night. It 

 is seen that the weight of the droppings from birds fed wet 

 mash in the morning is only about one-half of that from 

 hens fed wet mash at night. This, it seems to me, is quite 

 conclusive evidence that our ground grains, or mashes, are 

 more quickly digested than the whole grains. This fact has 

 considerable bearing upon the proportion of scratch feeds 

 and mash to be fed to hens we wish to force. A forcing 



