MAINE AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION. 49 



specially fed birds at a much higher price. The higher price is 

 due partly to the increased weight and partly to the superior 

 quality of the well-covered soft-fleshed chickens. As the bul- 

 letins containing the results of these feeding experiments with 

 cockerels are out of print, the following brief summary of the 

 results obtained is given : 



The number of pounds of grain required to produce i pound 

 of gain in fattening cockerels was ascertained in experiments 

 comparing (i) the effect of housing, (2) the effect of age, and 

 (3) the effect of skim milk. The grain mixture used in these 

 series of experiments was the same, consisting of 100 pounds 

 of corn meal, lOO pounds of wheat middlings, and 40 pounds 

 of meat meal. This was fed as a porridge thick enough to 

 drop but not to run from a spoon. 



The French and English fatteners who make a specialty of 

 the business, fattening thousands of chickens each year, con- 

 fine the chickens in small coops. The coops used at the Maine 

 Station gave a floor space of i6 by 23 inches, in each of which 

 4 chickens were placed. The coops were constructed of laths 

 with closed-end partitions of boards. The floors, sides, and 

 tops were of laths placed three-quarters of an inch apart. By 

 simply moving the pens thus constructed the fl.oors were kept 

 clean. V-shaped troughs with 3-inch sides were placed in 

 front and about 2 inches above the level of the floors of the 

 coops. Cockerels thus fed were compared with others kept in 

 small houses 9 by 11 feet in size, with an attached yard 20 feet 

 square. The yard was entirely free from anything that would 

 serve as green feed. Twenty birds were put in each of these 

 houses. As a result of experiments with fattening 286 birds it 

 was found that on the average 7.9 pounds of grain were re- 

 quired to produce i pound of gain in the case of birds fed in 

 the coops, and 5.9 pounds in the case of those fed in the small 

 houses and yards. 



An experiment with 150 birds when they were 4 months old 

 showed that they required 4.9 pounds of grain to produce i 

 pound of gain, while birds from the same stock, when they 

 were 6 months old, required 7.4 pounds of grain to produce i 

 pound of gain. 



