POULTR?Y-CRAFT. 99 
remaining fast, and allow the hens to help themselves at will. Finely cut 
clover in sacks is now on sale by leading supply houses. It is of little use to 
feed fowls woody stalks of hay, and if fine hay cannot be had otherwise it is 
worth while for a breeder who could use a considerably quantity of it, to pay 
a farmer to cut and cure for him a ton, or as much as he could use in a year, 
of clover or alfalfa in the right stage to make good poultry food. One who 
needed but a small quantity can often arrange to get a few bushels at a time 
of fine leaves from a neighbor’s haymow ; or may cure lawn clippings for him- 
self, though that is for most people rather unsatisfactory, and if his time is 
worth anything, costs more than to buy vegetables. Hay is too bulky — con- 
tains too much fiber—to be used as a principal poultry food. In everyday 
use no difference is noted in feeding proverties of the kinds named. Their 
rank as determined by analyses is: (1) white clover; (2) alfalfa; (3) red 
clover. Prepared clover finely cut for poultry food is kept in stock by large 
dealers in poultry supplies. 
132. Milk. —Sweer’ Skim Mitk —is invaluable in poultry feeding. 
It can be given as a drink, or the mash can be wet with or cooked in milk. At 
the low price for which it can be bought at creameries, it is one of the most 
economical of foods. 
Sour Mix, CLassBer MILk, and BuTTER Mik —are all fed. For mixing 
mashes they are not as satisfactory as sweet ‘milk, yet many use and like them. 
Cold clabber milk thickened with bran, middlings or corn meal, makes a side 
dish much relished by fowls in hot weather. 
Curp — is a valuable food— more concentrated than milk; giving the fowls 
the solids of the milk without the water. 
CuEEsE — that has passed the last stage of fitness for human food, is often 
given to fowls, and is highly recommended as an egg producer. 
Wuey — is used by many feeders to wet the mash. It contains so little 
solid matter that the advantage of using it, rather than water, to wet the mash, 
must be more fancied than real—especially as its solids are principally 
carbonaceous. If one has it, it will pay to use it— nothing should be wasted. 
It has not food value enough, however, to make it worth one’s while to go to 
any trouble or expense to get it. 
133. Egg Foods.— Condition Powders.— Tonics and Stimulants — 
of various kinds are in the debatable list between foods and medicines. Some 
use them for one, some for the other. The wisdom of using them depends on 
circumstances. It is certainly unwise for one whose fowls plainly need a 
tonic to neglect — ox principle — to use one; and it is as certainly unwise to 
feed stimulants to fowls in the best of condition, and at the height of profitable 
productiveness without them. Nearly all fowls are better for the regular 
addition of a condition powder to their mash during the moulting period, and 
at times when colds are epidemic; as they often are at the same time among 
men and domestic animals. 
