DRY-MASH FEED 145 
a man in the same time can increase his output without increasing 
his exertion ; it means that he need pay only one man where two 
were paid before ; it means that he can attend to double the number 
of fowls without any greater effort, and it therefore means that he 
can produce two eggs to every one he produced before. 
Let us see where the labour-saving comes in. If one feeds hot 
and moist meals to his fowls—which is the wet-mash system—it 
means that one has to put on a fire and get the utensils for cooking 
—or partially cooking—the food. I may describe the method of 
wet-mash feeding as practised in many of the large poultry farms. 
They buy an outdoor steam cooker, which costs anything up to 
£50. They have to fetch the fuel—wood or coal—and get the fire 
lit. Then comes the cooking. As a rule this takes from two to 
three hours. Sometimes they boil grain—wheat for preference— 
or they may cook meat or vegetables. Whatever is cooked in 
this manner has to be dried off with suitable meals—usually 
toppings. And it is no easy matter to dry off, say, a hundredweight 
of cooked food. It takes time and it requires skill. The mixture 
must not be too wet nor too dry, but ‘just so ’’—crumbly, they 
call it. 
If the food is not thus laboriously steam cooked or boiled and 
dried off, the least that is necessary is to boil water to scald the 
mixture of meals that have to be reduced to a crumbly state. 
First the meals have to be thoroughly mixed, then scalded, then 
mixed again till they are of the proper consistency for feeding. It is 
not a difficult matter if care be taken, but if one is careless or leaves 
it to a servant to see to, there is always the danger of the mixture 
being too wet and bowel trouble ensuing. Again, just enough 
wet-mash may be fed at a time to satisfy the birds for one meal. 
One must not let moist meals lie about in troughs exposed to the 
air, where chemical action speedily turns them sour and there is 
more trouble. With wet-mash feeding all this cooking and drying 
process has to be gone through every day, and the food trundled 
about from fowl-house to fowl-house, no matter what the weather 
is like. Wet mash is not suitable for feeding inside the house, and 
one, therefore, has to bring the birds outside in rain, hail or snow. 
K 
