16 FIRST LESSONS IN POULTRY KEEPING. 



How Much Meat and Bone.- \t sound sweet food of this class is fed regularly and 

 often it is generally safe to give the fowls all they will eat, if the meat food is fed separately. 

 Fresh meat may be used very freely in the mash, but the dried concentrated meat products 

 must be used with some caution. (See " Maliing a Mash," in Lesson I.) 



How Much Vegetable Pood.— In winter it is practically impossible to feed too much 

 vegetable food to fowls well fed on grain, because the appetite does not demand it, and 

 they will eat green stuffs in much more limited quantities than in hot weather when heavy 

 grain rations required to make eggs and growth are so heating that the fowls by choice 

 fill up on green food which keeps them more comfortable, but does not always accomplish the 

 results the poultryman is trying to get. 



Good Feeding Means Heavy Feeding. 



The longer I practice and study poultry feeding, and the more I see of tlje results of the feed- 

 ing of others, the more I am convinced that the best feeding is not the most carefully adjusted 

 riition, but the ration and the method that provides the fowls a little more than enough under 

 conditions which require them to work for enough of what they get to give them the exercise 

 they need to keep them in good condition. 



A fowl can let a surplus alone, but has no way of making up a shortage— at least none that is 

 satisfactory to the owner. 



As between feeding short and overfeeding, I have seen good egg yields come oftener from the 

 latter, especially with young stock; but there is little danger of bad effects from overfeeding if 

 fowls have to take exercise by scratching for several hours a day. 



Points to Consider in Determining Quantity in Feeding. 



In deciding how much to feed, the poultryman has in the fowl itself three guides, three things 

 that should furnish indications whether he is feeding right. These in the order in which it is 

 most natural to use them are: — (1) appetite, (2) results, (3) condition. 



Appetite.— The fowls should be ready and eager for each feed, even the light noon feed. If 

 they are not there should be either a change of time of feeding or a reduction of the quantity 

 given at the preceding teed. Frequently, poultrymen who feed the mash very early in the 

 morning find that the hens do not seem to care for it at that time, though an hour, or even a 

 half hour later, they will eat it readily. If the mash must be fed early, the night feed should 

 be reduced until they will eat the mash, but it will generally work better to give the full feed of 

 grain at night, and delay feeding the mash until the sun is well up. 



Results and Condition. — If hens are laying well, the presumption is that the feeding is 

 about right. In that case the point to watch is to see that the hens have food enough to keep 

 them in good condition while laying. A hen that is in laying condition can hardly be overfed. 

 If hens that presumably should be laying are not, the keeper should ascertain their condition by 

 handling them. If not plump and solid they should be given more food, and richer food. If 

 overfat they should be put on a diet of grain, and made to scratch for what they get until flesh is 

 reduced. Egg production does not, however, depend entirely upon feeding, and the most that 

 the poultryman can do is to keep his hens as nearly as possible in laying condition— that is, fat, 

 but not so much so that the abdomen is packed with fat, and the hen either becomes sluggi>h 

 or breaks down. 



Exercise and Feeding. 



Exercise by Scratching.— Throughout northerly latitudes the general provision for giving 

 fowls exercise is by littering the floors of the houses with straw, hay, leaves, cut corn stalks, or 

 any material in which the grain will bury Itself, or with which it can be covered, so that the 

 fowls must scratch for it. The proper use of litter calls for the same exercise of judgment as 

 the adjustment of the meals or the determination of the proportions of the ingredients of the 

 ration. Though errors both ways are numerous, the prevailing tendency Is to use too much 

 litter and compel too much exercise,— to make it so hard for the fowls to get feed that they 



