2 24 POULTRY CULTURE 



(by measure), corn meal, and from 5. to 10 per cent of the total beef scrap or 

 animal meal ; cooked overnight ; fed in the morning ; grain in hoppers acces- 

 sible at all times. 



This is the method of the colony poultry-farming district of Rhode Island. 

 Different poultry keepers here vary the proportions of ingredients in the 

 mash, often according to habit or individual custom rather than on judg- 

 ment. Cracked corn is the principal grain fed. Mixtures of grains are some- 

 times used, or variety may be introduced by occasionally filling a grain hopper 

 with wheat or oats. The point of chief interest in connection with practice in 

 this district is the general uniformity of results in spite of considerable super- 

 ficial differences in feeding practice, and the generally good condition of the 

 stock in spite of features of feeding which, under less favorable conditions, are 

 apt to cause trouble. To illustrate : One may find one farmer feeding to young 

 chickens, goslings, and ducklings a very carefully made and cooked mash, 

 his next neighbor feeding a very carelessly compounded, sloppy mash, and all 

 the youngsters thrifty.^ The general conditions and the abundance of other 

 food reduce the advantage of careful, and minimize the ill effects of careless, 

 feeding. Data for close comparisons of results and profits are not obtainable, 

 but it is easily seen that some of the most prosperous poultry keepers in the 

 Rhode Island district would soon put themselves out of business if they should 

 undertake to apply their feeding practice under intensive conditions. 



Maine Agricultural Experiment Station Rations 



Examples 10-16 give the various rations used at the Maine Experiment 

 Station. 



10. For young chickejis in brooders. For the first two or three days, infer- 

 tile eggs boiled for half an hour, ground (shell and all) in a meat chopper and 

 rubbed together with about six times their bulk of rolled oats, and fed with 

 chick grit on the brooder floor. About the third day the following mixture of 

 small broken grains is given : 



Parts by 

 weight 

 Cracked wheat .... .... . . . • 15 



Pinhead oat meal 

 Fine cracked corn 

 Fine cracked peas 

 Broken rice 

 Chick grit 



10 



3 



2 



S 



Fine charcoal . , . 2 



1 In a trip through this district in May, 191 1, a number of the farmers whom I met 

 complained to me that rations always before satisfactory did not seem to agree 

 with young chickens, geese, and ducks. This is easily explained. Both the spring 

 and the preceding winter were bad seasons for poultry. Consequently, the stock 

 was weakened and the young birds could not stand errors in their diet which, 

 under more favorable circumstances, had produced no ill effects. 



