POULTRY FLESH AND FATTENING 
improved, consisting of juicy, tender flesh. For this reason 
the crate-feeding process is often spoken of as fleshing rather 
than as fattening. 
The enforced idleness causes the muscular tissue to become 
tender and filled with stored nutriment. The fatness of a 
young chicken, crate-fed on buttermilk and oatmeal, is a radi- 
cally different thing from the fatness of an old hen that has 
been ranging around the corn-crib. 
The crate-fattening industry while deserving credit for 
great improvement in the quality of chicken flesh in the 
regions where it has been introduced, cannot on the whole be 
considered a great success. It is commonly reported that 
some of the firms instrumental in its introduction lost money 
on the deal. The crate-fattening plant has come to stay in 
the communities where careful methods of poultry raising are 
practiced, and where the stock is of the best, but when a 
plant is located in a newly settled region where the poultry 
stock is small and feed scarce, the venture is pretty apt to 
prove a fiasco. 
While poultryman at the Kansas Experiment Station, the 
writer made a large number of individual weighings of fowls 
in the crates of one of the large fattening pants of the state. 
These weighings pointed out very clearly why the expected 
profits had not been realized. The birds selected for weigh- 
ing were all fine, uniform looking Barred Rock Cockerels. At 
the end of the first week they were found to still appear much 
the same, but when handled a difference was easily noticed. 
By the end of the second week a few birds had died and 
many others were in a bad way. The individual changes of 
weight ran from 24% pounds gain to % pound loss, and many 
of the lighter birds were of very poor appearance. [t is sim- 
ply a matter of forced feeding being a process that makes 
trouble with the health of the chicken if all is not just right. 
It ig probable that in the future more fattening will be 
done on the farm, or by the farmer operating in a small way 
among his neighbors. The reason for this is that the saving 
of labor in the large plant is hardly as great as the added loss 
from the shrinkage of the birds due to the excitement of 
shipping and crowding, and the introduction of disease by the 
mingling of chickens from so many different sources. 
The Canadians especially have encouraged fattening on the 
farm. The following is a hand-bill gotten out by an enter- 
prising Canadian dealer for distribution among the farmers 
of his locality: 
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