PRESENT CONDITION OF EXPERIMENTAL WORK IN 



FEEDING 



BY R. R. SLOCUM 



In order to understand clearly the status of the experimental feeding 

 work done in this country up to the present time, it is necessary to call to 

 mind the evolution of the poultry departments of the colleges and experi- 

 ment stations. Activities along this line even at those stations which have 

 the oldest reputation for poultry work are comparatively recent. The 

 beginning of these poultry departments was modest, consisting in most 

 cases, of a few fowls housed in make-shift sheds equipped and cared for with 

 implements and apparatus which found their way to the poultry depart- 

 ment only because every other department had discarded them as worth- 

 less. 



Along with this meager equipment, went in nearly every instance, very 

 small appropriations for carrying on the work. This made it necessary for 

 the poultry to be wholly or in large part, self-supporting. At the same 

 time, as it became known through the respective states that poultry work 

 had been started at the experiment stations, the need was felt of publishing 

 the results of some experimental researches to meet the demand for informa- 

 tion. Feeding problems lent themselves readily to fill this need. They 

 could be conducted with equipment but little additional to that needed 

 to keep the fowls under other than experimental conditions; the egg pro- 

 duction was not in most cases seriously affected, and the fowls still con- 

 tinued therefore to be self-supporting or nearly so; information along 

 feeding lines was usually greatly sought after and investigations of this 

 nature were consequently popular; results which could be published were 

 obtained in a comparatively short period of time while the technique of the 

 experimental work was not particularly burdensome or time-consuming. 

 More feeding tests than anything else thus came to be undertaken in the 

 earliest work done and many tests of this nature, though more elaborate, 

 have continued to be carried on up to the present time. 



The object of the feeding experiments may be said in general to have 

 been one of the following a comparison of methods of feeding, a com- 

 parison of some particular feed or feeds, or a determination of digestive 

 coefficients for poultry. 



