106 PROFITS IN POULTRY. 
CHARCOAL AND STIMULANTS. 
Poultry in domestication are not in anatural condition. 
Their diet is more or less restricted in variety, and that 
which they have is frequently of a character to fatten 
rather than to promote growth or egg-laying. This may. 
be in a measure counteracted by condimental food or 
stimulants. Before such measures are taken the poultry- 
raiser should provide everything else necessary or de- 
sirable—grain in variety, broken bones, oyster-shells or 
other form of lime, green food of some kind, cabbage or 
roots, gravel, and adry-dusting box; besides, pure water; 
and if milk or buttermilk can be had, a trough for that 
should be provided. 
Stimulants must be regarded not as food, but as 
medicine, used sparingly, and never daily. One mess of 
stimulating food once in two or three days is enough. 
Charcoal should be a stand-by. It defends against 
disease, keeps up the tone of the system, aids digestion, 
and promotes laying. Feed it powdered, and mix it up 
with wheat bran and Indian meal. Add to this mixture a 
heaping table-spoonful of powdered Cayenne pepper for a 
dozen fowls, given every third day, or every second day 
in acold snap, and continued for about ten days or two 
weeks, now and again, is promotive of laying and of 
health. This soft feed may be mixed with hot boiled 
potatoes, and fed either in the morning or at noon. 
Besides the hard grain fed at evening regularly, so that 
the fowls or other poultry may go to roost with full 
crops, and a little wheat scattered among leaves or straw 
to make them scratch for exercise, they will need little 
else. 
