3l8 MAINE AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION. I9IO. 



The fact that the digested and undigested portions of the 

 food are excreted together makes a serious obstacle in per- 

 forming experiments with birds and greatly increases the 

 amount of analytical work to be done. This probably in part 

 accounts for the small amount of work that has been under- 

 taken in this line. Another difficulty encountered is that fowls 

 are less adaptable to general conditions of digestion experi- 

 ments than other farm animals, owing to their activity and lia- 

 bility to depression of the normal metabolic processes that 

 might result from being confined in cages without exercise. 

 With all these obstacles in the way it is not surprising that but 

 little digestion work with poultry has been undertaken. The 

 only Experiment Station which has thus far published any re- 

 sults of this nature is the Oklahoma Station, Bulletin 46 by 

 Fields and Ford. Four years later, in 1904, Bulletin No. 56, 

 Bureau of Animal Industry, United States Department of Agri- 

 culture, by Dr. E. W. Brown, appeared giving the results of 

 some experiments and a very complete review of the literature 

 on the subject. According to Doctor Brown's review foreign 

 investigators have given much more attention to this class of 

 work than Americans. Two of these investigators, Lehmann 

 and Paraschtschuk, employed an ingenious method of collect- 

 ing the urine and feces separately by means of an artificial anus 

 established in the body walls. This was brought about by 

 means of an operation, cutting the intestine at a point just back 

 of where the urine emptied into it, and bringing the end out to 

 the body walls. The feces and urin were then collected sep- 

 arately in rubber bags. This method was considered in our 

 work, and Dr. Raymond Pearl of the Biological Department of 

 this Station operated on birds for the purpose. After a few 

 trials a capon, No. 908, was very successfully operated on and 

 made a good recovery but soon after being put on the experi- 

 mental ration, w^iich was at that time 7 parts corn meal to one 

 part of beef scrap, his bowels became inactive and the feces 

 had to be washed out at each collection. An experiment of 

 several days duration was obtained, however, and is given in 

 the tables, the feces number being 4470. The results compare 

 quite favorably with the others obtained by the chemical sep- 

 aratory method, but the bird could not have been considered in 

 normal condition. After a time the walls of the intestine be- 



