SPECIAL FOODS 55 



winter, that one egg will pay for all the food she will 

 consume, so it pays to feed the material that will induce 

 egg production. It is frequently the case that poultry 

 receive a sufficient quantity of food but not of the 

 proper kind to induce egg production. 



A pound of green cut bone per day is sufficient for 

 sixteen liens and such quantity ought not to cost over 

 one cent. Where fowls have yard range one quart of 

 grain at night and one pound of cut bone should be 

 sufficient for sixteen hens per day in winter. In 

 summer only the bone need be fed. Such a diet pro- 

 vides fat, starcli, nitrogen, phosphates, lime and all the 

 substances required for egg production. As eggs sell 

 for about three cents in winter, it is plain that it is 

 cheaper to feed bone than grain. In this connection 

 a bone cutter will be found necessary, which may reduce 

 the profits the first winter, but where a cutter is first 

 introduced among a community of poultry keepers it 

 is more than likely cut bone can be sold by the pound 

 to neighbors. 



At the Ohio state university an experiment was 

 made to test the value of green bone as a food for 

 laying hens in connection with oyster shells and gravel. 

 The trial was made with four divisions and two pens 

 in each division, one of old hens and one of pullets, 

 ten to each pen ; first division were fed green cut bone, 

 crushed oyster shells and gravel, second division received 

 green cut bone and gravel, third division crushed 

 oyster shells and gravel, foixrth division gravel only. 

 In the first the ten pullets laid 140 eggs, the ten 

 hens sixty-four, total 204 ; second division pullets 

 115, hens eighty, total 195; third division, pullets 

 seventy-nine, hens four, total eighty-three; fourth 

 division, pullets fifty-two, hens thirteen, total sixty-five. 



The first division received fourteen pounds raw 

 cut bone, two pounds oyster shells and all the gravel 



