BROILERS AND ROASTERS. 89 



broilers is, therefore, an operation to be conducted by the 

 novice with great care. It is better for him to be satisfied 

 at first with marketing them in just good condition than to 

 make losses by attempts to use extreme fattening methods. 

 As he grows in experience he can gradually approach 

 these methods, going as far with them as he finds safe for 

 him. 



51. Fattening Roasters. — As a chicken matures and 

 requires less and less food for growing bone, muscle, and 

 feathers, the food consumed in excess of these requirements 

 goes to reproduction or to fat, according to constitutional 

 tendencies and to conditions. The growers of soft roasters 

 have a considerable proportion of their pullets begin to lay 

 some weeks or even months before it is desired to sell 

 them, and all such are sold immediately, because after lay- 

 ing begins the meat.becomes harder and dryer — more like 

 that of an old hen. Other pullets will keep right on grow- 

 ing and not fatten until well on in the season. A propor- 

 tion of the caponized cockerels also develop into slips, and 

 the meat becomes hard and unfit for the trade for which it 

 was designed. The bulk of the crop, however, is generally 

 carried to early summer in good flesh. Then if more fat- 

 tening is needed it is accomplished on the same feeding 

 that has been used for the chickens since weaning, by 

 merely confining them more closely so that they may keep 

 quiet and let the fat accumulate. About ten days confine- 

 n ent — in pen and small yard — will usually make healthy 

 chickens in good condition as fat as is desirable. For years 

 I have fattened cockerels for frys and roasters on either the 

 same ration the growing stock was getting, or this ration 

 ■changed merely by using more meal in the mash, and all 



