RELATION OF FOOD TO QUALITY OF LGG5. 131 



inferior to some of the others, and so I have sometimes bad a larger proportion than desirable 

 of laving hens from the weaker stock, and in such cases I have found the eggs averaging lower 

 both in appearance and quality than when I succeeded in getting what pullets I wanted from 

 my most vigorous birds. One can make more careful comparisons in matters like this in his 

 own stock, but it is possible to see the facts in observations of the stocks of others. It is as 

 unreasonable to expect first class quality in eggs from hens in poor condition as to expect good 

 fruit from an unhealthy plant. A laying hen should be in good condition, with smooth, healthy 

 looking skin and firm flesh. Some fat is desirable. Fat hens generally will lay richer eggs. A 

 distinction should be made between fat and excessive fat, between healthy fat on an active fowl 

 and tlie dead weight of fat an unhealthy fowl may carry. 



What is variety ? To different persons it means different things. A farmer may say that his 

 cow gives so much milk or makes so much butter on grass. That may mean a considerable 

 variety, though the one term grass covers it all. It is said that there are often as many as forty 

 varieties of grass on an old pasture. Such a fact as this should be taken into account in con- 

 sidering the diet of hens on good grass range. On a western farm they may be fed nothing but 

 corn, but they get also all the various kinds of grass which the pasture provides, many suc- 

 culent weeds besides, and an almost endless variety of seeds of weeds and grasses, in addition 

 to such waste grain other than corn as the farm may afford, and worms and bugs in great 

 profusion. Compare such variety at this with the usual variety given hens kept in confinement, 

 and it is easy to see where the greater variety is, and how meager by comparison is the variety 

 afforded in a balanced ration containing even a dozen articles. 



Where hens in confinement suffer most for lack of variety is in green and succulent food. 

 Variety in grains is more readily provided. Grains are not perishable, and supplies can be kept 

 on band. But the dried substitutes for green foods, while excellent as far as they go, fall far short 

 of the natural provision that way. Where fowls must be kept in confinement, and the ground 

 room is very limited, I am inclined to think it is better to give up as much space as is necessary 

 to the growing of vegetables especially for the fowls, even though by doing so the fowls are 

 confined much more closely than desirable, and grow a variety of vegetables for them, lettuce, 

 cabbage, rape, anything that they will eat. 



J& 



The lack of fats in the ordinary ration results from overcaution in feeding fowls. To this is 

 due the abhorrence of corn, which is far more prevalent in the east than it should be. A dealer 

 in eggs in Boston who is also proprietor of a poultry farm has told me repeatedly that he bad 

 had many shippers whose eggs were so lacking in fats that they would not sell to the best trade, 

 who had remedied the trouble by feeding corn. Indeed, he said, he always felt so sure that a 

 shipper whose eggs were weak did not feed corn that he was in the habit of advising such to 

 feed corn. Many handlers of eggs claim that they can readily distinguish between the eggs of 

 corn fed hens and of hens fed wheat and oats and no corn by the appearance and consistency of 

 the eggs when broken. Fats may be provided in other ways, but corn is cheapest. 



The excessive feeding of swill is very common on "egg farms" near cities and towns where 

 large quantities of swill and table waste can be bad for the collecting, and there is generally a 

 disposition to feed all of this that the hens can possibly be made to eat, and as little as possible 

 of anything else. Weak and watery eggs and stock debilitated by an excess of soft food are 

 common results. Much of the refuse food thus used is spoiled before being collected, and often 

 the waste contains stuff the fowls ought not to have. Table waste properly saved and properly 

 used is one of the best of foods for poultry, but feeding almost wholly on such food makes 

 neither good poultry nor good eggs. 



It is a common idea that for egg production "protein" especially is required. The fact is that 

 what is needed in much larger proportion than it occurs in ordinary food articles is "fat." 

 This fact explains why laying hens may be fed so freely of fattening foods and not only not 

 become excessively fat, but even lose fat, sometimes. In this connection I would emphasize 

 another point too generally unappreciated. The prevailing idea of egg production is that eggs 

 are the product of such surplus of food taken into the body as a hen digests and assimilates, 



