150 MY POULTRY DAY BY DAY 
Hence one reason why dry mash has not been tested against moist 
mash in this country. There is another reason. Most of the 
poultry-keepers who send their birds to laying competitions are 
not commercial egg-farmers. They are all, or nearly all, breeders 
—that is to say, men who rear pedigree stock to sell at fancy prices, 
either as pullets or stock birds. In their clever hands pullets, 
and especially stock birds, will do exceptionally well on wet mash ; 
indeed they select only the birds that do well for the laying com- 
petitions. For making a stock bird grow big and powerful, such as 
we all like to see, a carefully handled wet-mash bird will fully hold 
his own with a dry-fed male bird. Naturally these pedigree birds 
are specially looked after and cleverly treated. One must also 
remember that until laying competitions give notice that they will 
accept birds fed on dry mash it would be folly for these scientific 
breeders to feed their birds otherwise than as they do. To a 
certain extent they cannot help themselves. 
Yet some of the big pedigree breeders are firm believers in dry 
mash, and use it consistently to feed the stock they keep for egg- 
production, thus proving that in their experience dry mash is the 
better system for eggs. Jonathan Collinson, of Lingart, Lancashire, 
who has won many laying competitions at home and abroad, is 
a firm believer in the efficacy of dry mash, and uses it for his 
egg-laying birds. 
In the absence of any official test of the two systems it is most 
difficult to prove which is the better for egg-production, but the 
fact that most of the leading commercial egg-farmers in the country 
use it consistently is a strong point in its favour. Numbers of 
smaller farmers have given up wet feeding in favour of dry, and 
I do not know of one case where the convert has gone back to the 
old system. These are what one may call strong circumstantial 
evidences in favour of dry mash, but it really requires a proper 
Government test over a long period to provide what the scientist 
would accept as proof, and until that is done the whole problem 
will remain in an unsatisfactory state. 
Of what would such a test consist ? 
In order to make the test thorough and conclusive it would be 
