FEEDING CHICKENS FOR GROWTH. 



By G. M. Gowell. 



COOPS vs. HOUSE AND YARD. 



This test is a continuation of work reported in Bulletin No. 64 

 where small coops, holding four chickens each, were compared 

 with small pens containing 20 birds of the same age and size. 

 The purpose was to learn if close confinement in small numbers, 

 gives better results than where larger numbers are kept together 

 without close crowding. 



The English and French chicken fatteners, who make a spec- 

 ialty of the business, fattening many thousands each year, use 

 small coops holding four or five birds each and claim advantages 

 for the method. This plan of fattening has been adopted by the 

 Canadian government and illustrated by it at various places, for 

 the purpose of encouraging the use of better methods by the peo- 

 ple. The work has been favorably noticed by the poultry jour- 

 nals of this country and under this encouragement the method 

 seemed likely of adoption by our poultrymen and farmers. The 

 coops we used are similar in size and form to theirs and our food 

 was prepared and fed in the same way as theirs, but it was 

 of different composition, as theirs was made largely from finely 

 ground oats and tallow, while we used corn meal, wheat mid- 

 dlings and ground beef scrap, with small quantities of finely 

 ground oats in the earlier tests. That our gains with the birds 

 in small coops were as great as those made by the foreigners is 

 shown by the reports which they have published. 



The coops that we used had each a floor space 16 by 23 inches. 

 They were constructed of laths with close end partition of boards. 

 The floors were of laths placed three-fourths of an inch apart, 

 and one inch from the walls, so that they might be kept clean by 

 the moving about of the birds. The coops were made, two 



