328 POULTRY PRODUCTION 



and profit per hen. Atwood' concluded, from experiments 

 with White Leghorn pullets, "that there was no benefit from 

 the extra labor involved in moistening mash as compared 

 with hopper feeding if dry." Mairs^ found that "the loss 

 among chicks fed on wet mash was much greater than those 

 on dry feed." While none of these experiments included 

 digestion trials, the results were not such as to point to the 

 probability that moistening the feed made it more digestible. 



Age and Curing of FeedstufEs. — ^The younger a plant is the 

 less crude fiber it contains. Unless, as in the case of young 

 rye, it contains a laxative property which brings about its 

 voidance before digestion is complete, the younger a plant is 

 the more completely will it be digested. For this reason 

 young clover is more desirable for poultry feeding than 

 fully matured clover, whether it is fed in the green or matured 

 state. Exposure of alfalfa, clover, oats, etc., to rain during 

 curing will also lower the digestive coefficient by leaching 

 out the soluble constituents which are likely to be highly 

 digestible and leaving the less soluble and less digestible ones. 



Agfe, Species, and Individuality of the Bird Fed. — It is prob- 

 able that, as in the case of other farm animals, the age of 

 poultry does not influence their digestion of the food and 

 that different breeds of the same species possess an equal 

 digestive power. 



There is considerable variation between individuals of 

 the same breed which may be due to some slight physical 

 weakness. Bartlett,' for instance, reports a Plymouth Rock 

 capon that digested 81.6 per cent, of the organic matter of 

 a given ration, while another capon of the same breed digested 

 94.1 per cent, of the organic matter of the same ration. 



It is not likely that different species of poultry have an 

 average digestion coefficient that is the same, any more than 

 do horses and cattle. St. Weiser and Zaitschek, as reported 

 by Brown,^ found that the digestive coefficient for the starch 

 of millet was 65.80 fo^ ducks and 91.80 for geese. There 

 has been very little work done with any species of poultry 



1 West Virginia Bulletin No. 130. 



2 Pennsylvania Bulletin No. 87. » Maine Bulletin No. 184. 

 ' Bureau of Animal Industry, Bulletin No. 56. 



