A POULTRY COMPENDIUM. 4I 



When they run at large and have a free range, the 

 numberless bugs, grasshoppers and worms which they ob- 

 tain satisfy the carnal cravings of their appetites ; but in 

 confinement they cannot get these things and their keeper 

 must furnish the bugs, grasshoppers and worms or a sat- 

 isfactory substitute therefor. Cooked meat chopped fine 

 will answer the purpose. Boiled plucks and livers or 

 any coarse and inexpensive meat is what should be pro- 

 vided, or the breeder can go into the business of raising 

 maggots or meal worms. It is not an attractive business 

 and yet a good maggot pit is not to be despised. To 

 make one, dig a hole one foot to eighteen inches deep, 

 fill with straw and horse manure, with a sprinkling of 

 yeast and some mashed potatoes and corn meal, covering 

 the mixture with about one inch of earth. As a single 

 fly is said to lay five hundred millions of eggs in a sea- 

 son, each egg producing a maggot in nine days, it will 

 be seen that you do not require a great supply of flies. 

 If we could only engraft the laying qualities of a fly on 

 the hen we should deserve well of our own and future 

 generations. A piece of meat buried slightly or hung 

 up in the sun will produce many maggots. To breed 

 meal worms it is necessary to get a supply, say a couple 

 of hundred, (most bird stores have them for sale and 

 bakeries have them sub rasa), and put them into an 

 earthen jar, with scraps of leather, bran and damaged 

 meal. Place cotton waste on the mass and keep it 

 moist with water. The worms breed very rapidly and 

 sixty days time will give you a supply for daily feeding. 

 Green food must not be forgotten. Tender blades 

 of grass, onions and cabbages, young oats, chopped fine, 



