CHAPTER XVII 
DRY-MASH FEED 
the question of dry-mash feed for laying hens. Why 
the controversy should be bitter I am at a loss to know. 
Differences of opinion regarding the best and most effective 
method of feeding I can understand, but why one should allow 
one’s emotions to enter into a purely economic discussion passes 
the wit of man. It is a question of experience and a question of 
fact. 
For anyone to give an opinion who has not carefully and 
systematically given the system a trial is an impertinence, and to 
condemn it without experience is to write oneself down an ass. 
On the other hand, anyone who pronounces against wet-mash 
feed without equal experience and trial is equally afool. The wet 
or moist mash system of feeding is the old one—the method applied 
from “time immemorial,” and we know that these ‘time im- 
memorial ” systems die hard when they die at all. There is always 
this to be said for an older method: ‘“‘ It has been tried and it has 
answered.” True. Wet mash has stood a long and varied trial, 
and it has answered well, but it does not follow that the dry-food 
system is not equally good, or perhaps better. As a rule the 
opponents of dry mash will not allow that it possesses any virtues, 
excepting perhaps that it is labour-saving, but they scoff at that 
part of the system by saying it is the last refuge of the lazy man. 
As well might they say that the railway train, the motor car, the 
electric telegraph, the telephone were the refuge oi the lazy man. If 
it can be proved that dry-mash feed saves labour—and that at least 
is indisputable—it only need be assumed that it is equal in other 
respects to the wet-mash method to make it the superior system. 
For, after all, what just does labour-saving mean ? It means that 
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A CONTROVERSY—long and bitter—has been raging over 
