Poultry Hygiene 21 



II. Hygienic Feeding 



Having housed our fowls they must be fed. Here the 

 same sort of history is to be found as in the case of housing. 

 Substantially all known edible substances must, at some time 

 or other, have been suggested or tried as component parts 

 of the rations of fowls. Not only have many and curious 

 substances been suggested as poultry food, but they have 

 been combined in formulae as weird as a medieval apothe- 

 cary's prescription. Actually practical poultry feeding is 

 much more of an art than a science, in the present state of 

 knowledge. While for pedagogical reasons it seems wise in 

 the teaching of poultry husbandry to spend a considerable 

 amount of time in calculating balanced rations and nutri- 

 tive ratios, it is very doubtful if all such activity has any 

 real or tangible relation to practical poultry feeding. 



Such attempts at a science of poultry feeding would ap- 

 pear to suffer from a serious defect. The assumption is 

 made in calculating a nicely balanced ration that all hens 

 are going to partake of this ration in the same way. But 

 this is very far from the biological actuality. Some individ- 

 ual hens like no grain except corn, and if fed a mixture will 

 eat only corn. Others are very partial to beef scrap, and 

 so on. To any one who studies the behavior of fowls it is 

 clear that the ration on paper and the ration in the crop are 

 two very different things. 



The successful feeding of poultry depends upon experi- 

 ence and acquaintance with fowls. The basic biological 

 factor is, once more, individuality. Each individual hen 

 is an independent living thing, possessing well marked likes 

 and dislikes of her own with respect to food. There can 

 be no question that the best results in the way of egg pro- 

 duction and meat production would be obtained if a skillful 

 feeder could feed each individual fowl by and for itself. 



