POULTRY RAISING 29 



water can drain off. Now if you soak two or three 

 tubs at a time you can dump them all in one barrel, 

 and leave them in this barrel until they sprout and be- 

 gin to heat. They should be thoroughly wet every 

 day so long as they remain in the barrel, and as soon 

 as they germinate heat they must be dumped in boxes 

 that have holes in bottom say three to five inches thick, 

 and wet and turned daily until ready for feeding. If 

 they get too hot in boxes cool down with cold water 

 and spread out thinner. To have .them at their best you 

 should start a lot every day and keep them fed up as 

 fast as they get fit. You will soon learn just how many 

 to start every day. A little cayenne pepper and salt 

 distributed through them evenly when fed will greatly 

 increase your egg yield and keep your hens in the pink 

 of condition — a teaspoonful of pepper and one of salt 

 to a common pailful. I, as an experiment, kept two 

 pens of leghorns six months on this processed oats and 

 beef scraps in front of them and no other feed and 

 they laid well all that time and went through the earliest 

 moJt of any hens on the plant, although I do not 

 advise feeding them alone. Now, if this falls in the 

 hands of one who has no cellar to grow their oats in, 

 nor no warm place in winter, they can be grown in 

 an open shed or barn by piling up a foot or more of 

 horse manure and setting your box on it and bank your 

 box on all sides with horse manure, put on a board 

 cover and throw over this a blanket and you can easily 

 grow them in such boxes during the coldest winter 

 weather. You can grow them much quicker in winter 

 time by wetting them with warm water, but in sum- 

 mer time they should always be wet with cold water. 

 They also make a great feed for ducks. Now remember 

 there is nothing that will grow chicks so fast as these 

 processed oats, and nothing so cheap for when they 

 grow at their best they can be grown for ten cents per 



