DIGESTION EXPERIMENTS W.ITH POULTRY. 3I9 



came weakened and rupture followed. As it did not seem pos- 

 sible that a bird under such abnormal physiological conditions 

 could normally digest its food, further work by this method was 

 abandoned and a method for collecting the feces under natural 

 conditions taken up. 



It was fully realized that a chance of considerable error might 

 be introduced in any method that involved a chemical separa- 

 tion of the feces from the urine, but it was not thought prac- 

 ticable to prepare the number of birds by operation for arti- 

 ficial anus necessary to make all the experiments that were 

 desirable even if it could be considered a more accurate pro- 

 cedure. 



In the pages which follow an account of the experiments as 

 carried out are given in detail. The composition of the foods 

 and feces are given in Table No. i. The weight of food and 

 feces together with other data is shown in Table 2. The coeffi- 

 cients found for each feed and bird are given in Table 3. The 

 average coefficients for each feed and mixture are given in 

 Table 4. Table 5 contains the average coefficients of all feed- 

 ing experiments available to the writer at the present time. 



"For the success of the experiments much credit is due to Mr. 

 A. C. Whittier and J\Ir. J. F. Merrill, assistant chemists at the 

 Station when the experiments were going on, who took the 

 greater part of the care of the birds and performed all the an- 

 alyses except most of the uric acid determinations which were 

 made by the writer. 



Method of Conducting the Experiments. 



The first experiments undertaken were with vear-old hens 

 and were conducted principally to gain information as to the 

 best methods to follow in the succeeding experiments. The 

 work with the female birds was not very satisfactory. They 

 were nervous, uneasy, and many of the experiments under- 

 taken were not carried through on account of the bird getting 

 out of condition. Only a few months during the winter could 

 be given to the work, so but few experiments were performed 

 in these preliminary trials. 



For the next season it was planned to have enough capons 

 provided to use for all the experiments but owing to adverse 

 circumstances only about half the number required were ob- 



