FEEDING 
took a week to figure out. This experiment can be varied by 
placing hens in individual coops and setting before each 
weighed portions of every food in the poultryman supply man’s 
catalogue. 
There is only one kind of feeding that will balance rations 
and that is to feed exclusively on wet mash. This is success- 
fuly done in the duck business, but the duck is a Chinese 
aa and his ways are not the ways of the more fastidious 
en. 
In dairy work the individual preferences of the cows are 
given attention and their whims catered to by the herdsman. 
I know of nothing that makes a man more feel his kinship to 
the beast than to hear a good dairyman talk of the personali- 
ties and preferences of his feminine co-operators. 
With commercial chicken work, humanly guided individual 
feedings is out of the question, though, if used, it might hasten 
the coming of the two-egg-per-day hen. Individual feeding 
with the hen as sole judge as to what she shall eat, which 
means each food in separate hoppers and free range, is the 
best system of chicken feeding yet evolved. 
The duty of the poultryman is to supply the food, giving 
enough variety to permit of the hens having a fair selection. 
In practice this means that every hen must have access to 
water, grit (preferably oyster shell), one kind of grain, one 
kind of meat, and one kind of green food. In practice it will 
pay to add granulated bone for growing stock. One or two 
extra grains for variety and as many green foods as conveni- 
ences will permit to increase palatibility—hence increase the 
amount of food consumed, for a heavy food consumption is 
necessary for egg production. 
As corn is the cheapest food known, let it be the bread at 
the boarding house and other grains the rotating series of 
hash, beans and bacon. The grain hopper may have two divi- 
sions. The corn never changes but the other should have a 
change of grain occasionally. The extent of the use made of 
the various grains will be determined by their price per pound. 
The proportions of food 61 the various classes that will be 
consumed is about as follows: 
Of 100 Ibs. of dry matter: 8 to 12 lbs. meat; 66 to 75 Ibs. 
grain; 15 to 25 Ibs. green food. 
The profits of the business will be increased by supplying 
the green food in such tempting forms as to increase the 
amount consumed and cut down the use of grains. 
The methods we have been describing in which various dry 
105 
