128 COMMON SENSE 
And we have never found any difficulty in getting -our birds fat 
enough for our own taste and that of our friends. 
In estimating the actual value of different kinds of grain for feed- 
ing purposes, we must remember that it is weight only that tells. 
One hundred pounds of one kind of grain may measure greatly 
more than one hundred pounds of another kind, and yet be greatly 
inferior to it in feeding value. Thus,as an egg producer, roo Ibs. 
of oats would be better than roo Ibs. of corn in the proportion.of 
13 to ro, but a bushel of corn would be more valuable than a 
bushel of oats, because it would weigh nearly twice as much, thus 
more than making up for the larger percentage of egg-forming ingre- 
dients contained in the oats. Indeed, I found that, taken as a 
whole, corn was usually the cheapest grain in market, and in buy- 
ing, therefore, I confined myself chiefly to corn. I found that when 
it was supplemented with other matters which were not expensive 
it was probably the best. But corn alone did not answer well.. 
The hens got fat and ceased laying. What I wanted, therefore, 
was phosphates and albuminoids; and the best and cheapest source 
of these, when they had to be purchased, was flesh and bones, and 
clover. I therefore made an arrangement with one or two butchers 
for a supply of bones and refuse meat, and continued to Jet the 
fowls have some of it for “dessert” at least every other day. The 
small bones were simply cleaned of their flesh with a knife, so far 
as it could be done without too much trouble, and then chopped 
with a cleaver into pieces that would go in the mill. The Wilson 
mill ground them rapidly and thoroughly, and when offered to the 
fowls it was fun to see them rush for the feast. The meat from the 
bones, and also other pieces of waste flesh, were passed through a 
chopping mill, which cut them into small pieces, so that a fowl 
could not drag off a large lot at once and run all round the coop 
chased by its companions—each one trying to steal a piece from 
another. ‘his happens only when the pieces are too large to be 
immediately swallowed. Nothing of the kind happened with meat 
-cut by means of our chopper. The fowls swallowed it readily, each 
one got its just share, and all were happy. 
Perhaps the cheapest form of flesh that I was able to obtain was 
