24 The Illustrated Book of Poultry. 



given over and above it. It is that surplus wliich, in the way we have seen, may be either 

 productive, simply inoperative, or actually prejudicial. These things may seem truisms, but tlieir 

 right ^understanding will greatly pave the way to success in practice. 



We need not stop to prove that as an egg contains animal food in its most concentrated 

 natural form— a fact well known to all physicians — its regular production must demand a regular 

 and sufficient supply of food adapted to produce it. There is an amazing difference between 

 the appetites of hens which are not laying and those which are, or are about to commence. 

 Hence, the starving system of feeding poultry can never afford any return ; and fowls which 

 are only allowed to eat " what they pick up," will, in England at least, rarely produce anything 

 worth speaking of In America and the Colonies, where grain is little thought of, and abounds 

 to some extent all over the farm, or in the English stack-yard at harvest seasons, it may 

 be different; but as a rule, chance feeding will always result in very chance receipts, added 

 to which, birds thus left to forage for themselves will in many cases lay away, where their 

 eggs can never be found. But in general the mistake is the other way ; and with respect 

 to adult fowls, we have not the slightest hesitation in saying that at least three-fourths of 

 all kept by the middle classes, excepting those of experienced " fanciers," have far too much 

 to eat. Farmers' fowls get far too little, other people's mostly the reverse. They get fat; 

 and a fat hen is never a good layer, while a pampered male bird is lazy, if not altogether 

 useless for purposes of breeding. 



As regards the nature of the food to be given, also, there is little sound knowledge 

 upon the subject amongst most who keep poultry. We can well remember our own school- 

 boy experience, when we kept fowls in a small stone-paved yard, disposing of the eggs to 

 our maternal parent, and paying for the foo3 out of our own private exchequer. Our first 

 idea was that grain was the only and the natural food of poultry, and we accordingly fed 

 them three times daily with as much as they would eat of that commodity. Had any one then 

 hinted that our fowls were not properly fed, we would have scorned the idea with indignation. 

 But it was so, and it is so in the scores of similar cases. Our birds would not thrive ; they did 

 not lay well, and often died. By degrees we found out why, and eventually, in that same 

 small yard, made our poultry speculation pay, acquiring there, on those stones and amongst 

 those difficulties which surrounded us on all sides, much of that practical knowledge of fowls, 

 their ways, their wants, and their habits, which has been most useful to us in after life. 



Grain is the natural food of fowls ; but so is grass, so are worms ; and it would be as 

 reasonable to feed birds in confinement exclusively on either of these as on grain alone. 

 Moreover, a fowl in its state of nature lives under altogether different conditions. It is only 

 intended to lay some dozen or so eggs in a season, whereas we wish to get about ten times that 

 number. The wild fowl, again, finds its food grain by grain ; and that everlasting mill called the 

 gizzard, called into incessant action, always reduces the grain as swallowed, so that the crop is 

 rarely, if ever, distended. The bird has literally to work, and work hard, for all it finds ; so that 

 all its functions are kept in the most vigorous e.^ercise. Under such conditions, with the grass and 

 worms it also picks up, the grains or seeds which forms its principal food do maintain tlie creature 

 in the highest health and condition ; though, as we have seen, the &%g production i.s not such as 

 would yield a profit to the poultry-keeper. These things again are truisms ; but we repeat them 

 because we constantly find persons who are for "following nature;" and the theory has a certain 

 plausibility if not exposed. If we " follow nature," we must follow her altogether, and we must 

 be content with natural results, which in this case would be one nest of eggs per annum ; if we are 

 to keep them in confinement, and to get many times the amount of eggs, we must change our diet 



