CHEAP FEEDING. 43 
when fowls are being fattened for slaughter, but if 
long continued, it will surely clog the system, make 
fowls over-fat, and in the end injure their general 
health and well-being. It should be understood 
that the tendency in capons, especially in cold and 
stormy weather when kept in enforced idleness, is 
to grow and lay on fat. Even without excessive 
feeding they are bound to get fat as butter. 
What is needed, in the first place, is a cheap, 
bulky material that will fill the fowls’ crops, taking 
the place of the grass and leaves of 
summer. Then we want a little mod- 
erate amount of grain to add substance 
and warmth in place of the weed seeds and the like 
found scattered about in the open season, and finally, 
something in place of bugs and worms. 
The bulky material is best and most cheaply sup- 
plied in chopped vegetables and chopped clover hay. 
Every fall I store a lot of beets, carrots, turnips, 
kohlrabi, etc., in the cellar, and cabbages in the 
barn or out-doors, for the very purpose of utilizing 
these vegetables for winter poultry feed. Cabbages 
are for the most part simply thrown into the hen or 
capon houses as needed. Roots of all kinds, also 
small potatoes and apples, are chopped up in a plank 
box with a sharp spade, then (sometimes slightly 
salted) mixed with a little bran and fed in their raw 
state. In cold weather a mess of beets, turnips, 
carrots, pumpkins, squashes, small potatoes and 
peelings of all kinds cooked in a big kettle, and 
stirred up with bran to a thick, crumbly mass are 
greatly relished by all fowls as a warm breakfast. 
Chopped clover hay, and the chopped leaves of 
Bulky Food 
Wanted. 
