26 



FEEDING FOR EGGS: HOW MUCH? 



The problem, as every poultryman knows, is not what to 

 feed, but how much. If you do not believe this write to the 

 editor of your favorite poultry paper and ask him' how much 

 food you shall give a flock of 15 hens, and see what he will say. 

 It takes a great deal of skill to steer between overfeeding on the 

 one hand and underfeeding on the other. I believe, however, 

 that there is a. scientific principle underlying the matter, and 

 think that after a great deal of study and experimentation I 

 have discovered the principle. 



In order to determine how much we should feed we must 

 again interrogate Nature. Before we began to dissect the crop 

 of the hen we had killed, suppose we had put it on the scales 

 to ascertain its weight. If the hen from which the crop was 

 taken was of an American breed, if she had been running in 

 the fields all day and just before she had been killed had been 

 given all the corn that she would eat, her crop with its contents 

 would not weigh far from six ounces. Allowing that two 

 ounces of food have passed into the intestines, it will be seen 

 that when a hen is on the range, supplied with abundance of 

 food, she will consume about eight ounces of food in the course 

 of twenty-four hours. It would seem, therefore, that this is 

 about the amount a hen needs to supply all the demands of her 

 system and leave a margin for egg production. But before we 

 settle down to this conclusion there are some things to be 

 taken into consideration. On the range the hen has had plenty 

 of exercise, and needs more food to supply the tissue lost than 

 when in confinement. On the range food is more bulky and 

 less nutritious than the food the hen receives in her pen. It 

 contains a larger proportion of grass and vegetables. It is 

 probable that in the pen, where the hen does not exercise so 

 freely as she does on the range and where her food is more 

 concentrated, she does not need so much food by one-fourth 

 as she does when at liberty. Six ounces of food a day ought, 

 therefore, to be ample to supply all -the needs of a hen in con- 

 finement. 



Six ounces of food a day for a hen weighing six pounds 

 seems at first sight an enormous quantity. In the same ratio a 

 man weighing 160 pounds would consume 10 pounds of food 

 every twenty-four hours. But before we dismiss the matter 

 as absurd let us consider a moment. The hen's food is not so 

 concentrated as the man's. It contains far less nutriment in 

 proportion to bulk. A considerable proportion of it will be 



