31 



-over night, 4 quarts. In the morning add 2 quarts shorts, 1 

 quart beef and bone, 2 quarts corn and oats. 



The mash is fed in the morning, and the hens are given 

 all they will eat up clean in ten minutes. The second and last 

 meal comes at noon, and is grain of some kind. 



The day Mr. Dunlap feeds boiled potatoes the hens have 

 wheat. The day he feeds waste bread they have wheat or 

 cracked corn. The day he feeds clover hay they have cracked 

 corn. And the day he feeds oats and gluten they have cracked 

 corn or buckwheat. The grain is thrown into the sand and 

 litter in each pen, and the hens have to scratch for it. Mr. 

 Dunlap does not give the hens all the grain they can eat, but 

 as much as they can digest and come to breakfast the next 

 morning with an empty crop and a good appetite. Whole tur- 

 nips are kept in the pens all the time, so that the hens can get 

 a taste of green food when they want it. 



Mr. G. M. Gowell of the Maine Experiment Station is do- 

 ing some excellent work with hens. Mr. Gowell is the origina- 

 tor of the trap nest described in this book, and keeps individual 

 records. He breeds White Wyandottes and Barred Plymouth 

 Rocks, and" long ago found the 200 egg hen. He feeds as 

 follows : 



Twenty pullets and two cockerels are kept in each lot. 



Each pen of twenty-two receives one pint of wheat, in the 

 deep litter early in the morning. At 9:30 A. M. one-half pint 

 of oats is fed to them in the same way. At 1 P. M. one-half 

 pint of cracked corn is given in the litter as before. At 3 P. M. 

 in winter and 4 P. M. in the summer they are given all the 

 mash they will eat up clean in half an hour. 



The mash is made of the following mixture of meals : 200 

 pounds wheat bran, 100 pounds corn meal, 100 pounds wheat 

 middlings, 100 pounds linseed meal, 100 pounds meat meal or 

 fine meat scraps. Part of the year the linseed meal is omitted, 

 and the amount of meat meal doubled. The mash contains one- 

 fourth of its bulk of clover leaves and heads, secured from the 

 feeding floor in the cattle barn. The clover is thoroughly 

 soaked with hot water. The mash is made quite dry. Cracked 

 bone, oyster shells, clean grit and water are at all times before 

 them. Two large mangels are fed to the birds in each pen 

 daily in winter, and green food in plenty in summer. 



