52 The Truth About the Poultry Business 



the right ingredients. If your ration is right, the food will be 

 food for all and poison to none. 



When I obtained such different results from the last experi- 

 ments, I made a careful analysis of my feed and I found that 

 the only possible difference there could be was in the bran. I 

 had used the bran for the last experiments from a later ship- 

 ment from the mills, and I thought that that might be the reason 

 of the difference. I got out the sack of bran that I had used 

 in the original twenty experiments and it looked exactly like 

 the other bran. I mixed up the ration of twenty parts of bran 

 and one part of milk and fed it to the five hens which I will 

 now call Pen No. 1. Then I mixed up the same ration, using 

 the other bran, and fed it to five pens which I will call Pen No. 

 2. These pens were fed wheat for grain, and after about ten 

 days the fowls in Pen No. 1 looked fine and began to lay, while 

 those in Pen No. 2 started to lay but soon began to set. Here 

 were two entirely different results obtained from exactly the 

 same rations, the only difference being that the brans used 

 were from different shipments, although they were exactly 

 alike as far as appearance was concerned. 



Now, in order to be sure that it was the bran that caused 

 these opposite results, I reversed the feed, gave Pen No. 1 

 the bran that Pen No. 2 had had, and gave Pen No. 2 the 

 bran Pen No. 1 had had. In a short time the Pen No. 1 

 hens started to lay and then to set, exactly as the hens in 

 Pen No. 2 had done, while hens in Pen No. 2 gradually came 

 into fine condition and laid about every other day. I 

 repeated these experiments time after time, and would get 

 the same results each time. Here at last a light dawned 

 upon me — a light from out of the darkness of years. Here 

 at last I saw the causes of my other failures; I understood 

 at last why I had never been able to make head nor tail of 



