FEEDING AHD lATTENING. 



{he increase of stature ; and it may be a work of some weeks 

 to recover it, — especially with young cocks." 



But whether you take them in hand as chicks, or not till 

 they are older, lie three prime rules to be observed are, sound 

 and various food, warmth, and cleanliness. There is nothing 

 that a fatting fowl grows so fastidious about as his water. If 

 water any way foul be offered him, he will not drink it, but 

 sulk with his food, and pine, and you all the while wondering 

 the reason .why. Keep them separate, allowing to each bird 

 as much space as you can spare ; spread the ground with sharp, 

 sandy gravel ; and taie care that they are not disturbed. In 

 addition to liieir regular diet of good com, make them a cake 

 of ground oats or beans, brown sugar, milk, and mutton suet. 

 Let the caie lie till it is stale, then crumble it, and give each 

 bird a gill-measureful morning and evening. No entire grain 

 should be given to fowls during the time they are fattening ; 

 indeed, the secret of success lies in supplying them with the 

 most nutritious food without stint, and in sudi a form that 

 their digestive mills shall find no difficulty in grinding it. 



It would, I think, be a difficult matter to find, a^moiig the 

 entire fraternity of fowl-keepers, a dozen whose mode of fatten- 

 ing " stock " is the same. Some say that the grand secret is 

 to give them abundance of saccharine food ; others say nothing 

 beats heavy com steeped in milk ; while another breeder, cele- 

 brated in his day, and the recipient of a gold medal fi:om a 

 learned society, says, " The best method is as follows : — The 

 chickens are to be taken from the hen the night after they are 

 hatched, and fed with eggs hardboiled, chopped, and mixed 

 with crumbs of bread, as larks and other small birds are fed, 

 for the first fortnight; after which give them oatmeal and 

 treacle mixed so as to crumble, of which the chickens are very- 

 fond, and thrive so fast that, at the end of two months, they 

 will be as large as full-grown fowls." 



Others there are who insist that nothing beats oleaginous 

 diet, and cram their birds with ground oats and suet. But, 

 whatever the course of diet favoured, on one point they seem 

 agreed ; and that is, that, while fattening, the fowls should be 

 kept in the dairk. Supposing the reader to be a dealer, — a 

 breeder of gross chicken-meat for the market (against which 

 supposition the chances are ten thousand to one), and beset 

 with as few scruples as generally trouble the huckster, the ad- 

 vice is valuable. " Laugh and grow fat " is a good maxim 

 enough ; but " Sleep and grow fat " is, as is wjl known to 



