38 The Truth About the Poultry Business 



would eat a little dry mash, but only about one-fourth of what 

 the other flock of hens ate. The hens that were the weakest 

 ate the least. 



I thought that if I could not make them work when they 

 had the dry food in front of them, perhaps if I should 

 dampen the mash slightly so that it would hold together and 

 scatter it in the clean straw and on the clean floor, they 

 would work more. If, as the poultry papers said, it was on 

 account of the accumulation of fat on the hens that pre- 

 vented them from laying, by making the hens work more 

 this would be worked off. I had already tried the dry bran, 

 but the hens began to die, and I had to change. I tried mak- 

 ing them work for a couple of weeks, and the results were 

 very bad. 



During this time quite a number of my hens did not eat 

 a bite and several died. I saw that this system of feeding 

 was not good, and so I went to the wet mash system, feed- 

 ing grain in the morning and mash at night. After several 

 weeks of this system of feeding, my hens were in an awful 

 condition. Roup was now prevailing in the flock. 



I used pure, fresh blood in the mash instead of "Beef, 

 Blood, and Bone," and the results were worse. 



For years I changed from one system of feeding to another 

 and from one food to another, feeding one pen a little differently 

 from the others. I confess that I made about the most brilliant 

 failure of any one that ever engaged in the poultry business. 

 After eight years of the hardest kind of work I did not have a 

 cent — eight years of studying faithfully the methods advocated 

 in the best books ever written on poultry by supposed experts. 

 After eight years of this I knew absolutely nothing about making 

 a success of the poultry business. My knowledge consisted of 

 knowing only a great many things that would not work. 



