420 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



Some of the best results in winter egg production I have ever seen 

 have been obtained from flocks which were not handled in the best 

 way. There were faults in the management during the winter which 

 might have been avoided; but the poultrymen made their fowls pay 

 better, in spite of these faults, than most others did without them, 

 and they did this simply by working on the principle of giving their 

 fowls all they could eat. I went one day to visit a poultry farmer 

 who had the reputation of always getting good egg yields in winter. 

 What I saw in the nests in his houses in the dead of winter seemed to 

 justify his reputation. I asked him to what he attributed his success. 

 He replied, "The only difference I can see between my poultry keep- 

 ing and that of those poultrymen about here who complain that they 

 can't get eggs is that I keep food before my hens all the time." His 

 hens were inclined to get too fat toward the end of winter, and fall 

 off in egg production ; but he made more than he lost by heavy feeding. 



A Maine farmer whose farm I visited several years ago had about 

 five hundred hens, and kept cracked corn before them all the time. 

 They had the range of the farm in summer, but were not out of the 

 houses much in winter. He was said to be the only farmer in that 

 neighborhood who always had eggs to ship to Boston in December 

 and January. 



I once asked one of the most successful poultry keepers of my ac- 

 quaintance, a man who combines poultry keeping and general farm- 

 ing, what he thought was the principal thing in winter egg production. 

 He replied that it had been his observation that if pullets were ready 

 to begin laying about the beginning of winter they would begin and 

 lay right through, provided they got enough to eat ; and that he could 

 not see that it made much difference — within the range of usual 

 poultry foods — how or what they were fed ; the all-important thmg 

 was to give them all they could eat. Of course he did not mean that 

 the kind and quality of food made no difference. In making such a 

 statement, it is understood that the reference is to rations such as 

 good poultrymen would use. 



Good feeding sometimes consists more in using to advantage waste 

 products and cheap products than in getting large results. To do 

 this the poultry keeper must be in a measure independent of systems, 

 — not bound either by wrong conditions, or weak stock, or faults in 

 his methods, to follow carefully a delicately balanced system. 



