90 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



feeding hens bj underfeeding than bv overfeeding. The 

 great point is not only to feed the right kind of rations, but 

 to give them enough to eat. 



Now, let us get a little better proof. That is just one hen, 

 and one case does not establish a ]aw or a theory. One day 

 we were killing 40 or more hens that had been fed alike, and 

 all of the same breed. We wanted to see how they com- 

 pared in fatness and production, and we photographed those 

 hens after they were killed and cut open properly, so as to 

 show their internal fat in the order of their fatness. You 

 will see in the illustration (Fig. 19), the three fattest hens 

 on the left and the three leanest on the right, their organs 

 imder them. The three fattest hens all had eggs fully 

 formed, hard-shelled, ready to be laid. The oviducts 

 showed that they would have gone on laying for weeks to 

 come. The three leanest hens were absolutely dormant. 

 You can feed hens so much of certain kinds of food that 

 they will be lazy and phlegmatic. You can underfeed them 

 so that they can't lay or even maintain themselves. The 

 rule should be to give hens all they can eat of the right 

 kind of food at least once or twice a day, and make them 

 come hungry to the third feeding. When they show that 

 they are hungry enough to want to eat more by coming to 

 meet you, then you know that they have made good use of 

 the food. A hen has difficulty in eating too much of any 

 dry, fine food, even though it is before her for half the day ; 

 consequently, we have come to adopt the rule of letting the 

 hens eat all of the ground food they want each afternoon, and 

 then giving them a little grain in the morning to keep them 

 busy, and at night giving them what they will eat up clean. 

 Following is the Cornell ration for egg production and the 

 method of feeding and its results : — 



