FEEDS AND FEEDING I25 



vegetables, cut clover and beef scraps, all mixed in a 

 crumbly mass with some bran, shorts, chop feed, a little 

 oil meal and salt, and sometimes a little powdered 

 .charcoal. Clean, fresh water is given them twice a day 

 and oyster shells and grit are kept before them at all 

 times. The houses are dry and warm and the fowls 

 ■are fed only as much as they will eat up clean. 



The flavor and quality of the eggs are greatly 

 dependent upon the food given to the fowls. Healthy 

 hens, fed on wholesome corn and allowed a free range, 

 supply eggs that have a very consistent white and yolk 

 •of a bright yellow color. These eggs are well flavored 

 and nutritive. Hens badly fed, that have to seek their 

 food, not in the open country, but in dirty manure 

 heaps and similar places, where they come across 

 decomposing carcasses, especially if these latter be fish 

 refuse, produce eggs with thin albumen or white, and, 

 when cooked, are very unpleasant to both smell and 

 taste. Fowls having free range during the summer 

 pick up all the green food and animal matter in the 

 shape of bugs and worms which they need. When 

 confined to small pens and yards, or in the winter time 

 when such things cannot be procured, they must be 

 supplied artificially. 



Animal food in some form is required in winter 

 as well as in summer. Green cut bone forms a cheap 

 and good food where the bones can be procured. By 

 green bone we mean bones fresh from the butcher, with 

 the adhering gristle, meat, etc. Every meat shop has 

 a great deal of this waste material, which is unfit for 

 market, and which finds its way to some soap factory, 

 •or is thrown to the hogs. Sometimes there will be 

 several large pieces of meat which the butcher cannot 

 sell. These pieces add a great value to the bones. 

 Then on the farm there are a great number of joints 

 and pieces of waste meat and bone which are thrown 



