PRACTICAL FEEDING OF POULTRY 



GRIT 



Grit should be kept before poultry all of the time 

 and is usually one of the first feeds given to young 

 chickens of all kinds. Chickens need a fine chick size 

 grit while a coarser grit about the size of a large grain of 

 corn is better adapted for fowls. The grit for hens should 

 be very hard in texture as these hard stones assist in 

 grinding the food in the fowl's gizzard. 



One of the essentials of grit is hardness, and soft stones 

 such as some of the softer limestones do not make good 

 grit. Fine sharp clean sand mixed in with the feed is 

 usually provided as grit for ducklings and goslings and 

 may also be supplied to young chicks using about 3 per 

 cent of this grit in the feed. Where hard grit is not 

 available the temporary use of broken crockery will pro- 

 duce good results in sections where the ordinary stone is 

 of a soft limestone nature. Reports from turkey sections 

 in the South have indicated that supplying a hard grit to 

 turkey poults resulted in much better results from the 

 poults in sections where the natural stone was a soft lime- 

 stone, even where the turkeys had excellent range. 



Where chickens are fattened commercially grit is not 

 usually supplied during the short fattening period al- 

 though some feeders use a limited amount of grit. 

 Chickens on free range on a gravelly soil containing 

 large quantities of fine hard pebbles or grit do not need 

 additional grit nearly so much as do chickens kept con- 

 fined to small yards or where there are no small hard 

 stones in the soil. 



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