AMERICAN POULTRY CULTURE 
time the fowls can get absolutely no food, for weeks 
at a time, except that which is supplied by the 
attendant. Mix all the table scraps in with the 
mash or feed them separately in troughs; nothing 
better could be served by way of variety. Apple 
parings and potato parings are also good and 
usually available every day or two. Cooked tur- 
nips and beets are good, and so are pumpkins 
and squashes; in fact, almost anything that the 
birds will relish. I have all egg shells crushed and 
fed to our hens, as they will supply the material 
with which to make more shells, but we are care- 
ful to see that they are broken into very fine bits, 
so that their use will not teach the fowls the egg- 
eating habit. 
It is the busy hen that lays the greatest number 
of eggs. I find that one of the best and most prac- 
tical ways to give chickens interesting work while 
confined to the house in winter is to supply them 
with some unthreshed grain in the sheaves. Oats, 
wheat, buckwheat, and millet are excellent, but 
any small grain that the fowls like will do quite 
as well. In the fall I always see that we get stored 
away enough unthreshed grain to enable us to 
supply one or two bundles to every twenty or thirty 
of our hens each day that the weather is such that 
the fowls are kept confined to the house. 
What to do when it snows or rains is a perplex- 
ing problem to many beginners in poultry culture. 
226 
