BROILERS AND ROASTERS. 79 



made the larger part of a mixture, or may be fed separately 

 several times a' day, the other feeds, given alternately with 

 it, furnishing greater variety. Cracked corn is a favorite 

 food with nearly all growers of market poultry for this rea- 

 son, and is mostly used in larger quantities than any other 

 one ingredient in both wet and dry feeding. At the prices 

 that usually obtain comparatively little wheat or other 

 grains is used by large growers. Those who use mashes 

 alternate them with cracked corn. Those who feed dry 

 alternate cracked corn with a more expensive mixture until 

 the chicks are several weeks old, and considered past " the 

 danger period." After that the larger growers nearly 

 all get down as near as possible to a diet of corn, meat 

 scraps and some green stuff, no more of other ground or 

 whole grains being used than is necessary to mix with corn 

 meal in cake or mash or to relieve the monotony of an all 

 corn grain ration. The soft roaster growers feed prac- 

 tically nothing but cracked corn, meat scrap, and green 

 food to their chickens after taking them from the brooder 

 houses and placing them in lots of fifty in such houses as 

 that illustrated on page 53, or in corresponding larger lots 

 in the slightly larger colony houses sometimes used. 



42. Green Food. — Neither green food nor meat is 

 absolutely essential in the diet of young chicks. They 

 have often been known to grow and thrive for weeks with- 

 out either. But growth is generally better, the chicks 

 healthier, and the risks in handling them less when green 

 food and meat food are supplied practically from the first. 

 For green food there is nothing better than cabbage, which 

 can be fed by putting a head, leaves, stump and all in the 

 pen and letting the chicks pick it to pieces. There is no 



