142 POULTRY BREEDING 
no proprietary mixture has any value above the value of 
ordinary feeds. No patent so-called egg-food is worth 
the price asked. 
FEEDS AND FEEDING.—With good houses and 
proper feeding, the poultry business can successfully be 
carried on in almost any place. Location, exposure as to 
sunlight, accessibility to markets and even breed are all 
secondary to these two things. All fowls do well under 
many varying conditions if properly fed and housed. The 
products of the poultryyard are of such nature that they 
can be sent to quite distant markets at comparatively lit- 
tle cost. Irregularities of climate do not count for much 
if fowls are fed and housed in the proper way. The prin- 
cipal trouble in feeding fowls is that no one seems to be 
able to determine what a balanced ration for fowls is 
composed of. We know from experience that the vari- 
ous grains, grasses, vegetables and animal substances of 
various kinds are all greedily relished by fowls, but the 
exact combination of the various nutrients has never 
been determined as exactly as in the case of other stock. 
So far investigators along this line have assumed that the 
feeding tables that apply to other stock are approxi- 
mately the ones that will produce best results in feeding 
poultry. Prof. Rice of Cornell University has expressed 
some doubts concerning this. He thinks it possible that 
a laying hen would do better on a ration that would be 
considered rather wide for a farm animal, basing his 
theory on the fact that fowls have a higher temperature 
than cattle or swine and require rather more carbohy- 
drates to maintain animal beat. 
It may be stated with a considerable degree of confi- 
dence that a fowl requires a larger proportion of the 
mineral elements that are found in feed stuffs than other 
