Preparation of Soft Food. 
27 
be used for most poultry, except combined with other meals, and is also disliked. For laying birds 
it ought never to be used alone. S pratt's Poultry Meal is excellent, especially mixed with meal. 
Ground oats, then, will make the best economical soft food, if it can be obtained. If not, 
sharps and barley-meal, mixed in equal portions, will make an excellent food, varied very rarely by 
boiled potatoes well mashed, and mixed with at least an equal weight of sharps alone. Now and 
then turnips, beet, or mangel-wurzel, boiled in as small a quantity of water as possible, may be 
mashed and mixed with sharps, and given to great advantage, or may be used as a permanent diet. 
Oatmeal may be used at discretion if only cheap enough, or mixed with barley-meal ; and probably 
the very best material possible is a mixture of half ground-oats or coarse but sound oatmeal, with 
Spratt. We reared better birds on this than upon any other combination or single food we tried. 
The proper mixing of this soft food is important, and error in its preparation is another 
fruitful source of failures to make a satisfactory profit. By far the larger number of servants will 
mix it too wet and sloppy, to save a few seconds additional time ; and give it as a sticky, porridgy 
mass, which clings round the beaks of the fowls. Such feeding often causes diarrhoea, and in any 
case will rarely produce a proper egg-return. Again we shall be dogmatic, and lay down the 
universal rule that soft food must be so mixed that while none of the meal be left in powder or 
dry, the whole be so firm and “ short ” that a mass of it will break and crumble if thrown upon the 
ground ; not on any account sticking with a “ smack,” as when a boy throws his lump of clay against 
a wall. All meal can be mixed this way if properly done, which is by stirring the water first 
well in with a spoon or stick, all remaining apparently too dry to mix thoroughly, and then 
kneading and squeezing it together in the hands. Food so mixed does twice the good, for 
the simple reasons that it is both more wholesome in itself and more enjoyed. Meal com- 
bined with turnips or potatoes need not be mixed quite so dry ; but all soft food, rightly 
prepared, will be hard enough to be rolled out with a roller into a sheet, if required. Some 
good feeders prepare it thus, rolling it out and cutting the sheet into small finger-pieces, which 
are thrown to the fowls ; but when mixed “ short ” as we have directed, it will break up easily 
without this trouble. 
Where only a few fowls are kept, not exceeding say one bird for each member of the family, 
to supply eggs for the table occasionally, the morning food may be provided at very trifling 
expense by boiling daily the potato-peelings and all refuse vegetables, and mixing, as above, with 
fine sharps or middlings. The peelings and other vegetables must, however, be thoroughly boiled 
until quite soft, and a slight seasoning of salt, with in winter a very little pepper, should always 
be added. The want of egg-forming material, which we have already pointed out to be a fault 
in potatoes as a diet, is partly compensated by the sharps which are mixed with them ; but in the 
case we are considering, is still further and most perfectly supplemented by the bone-scrapings and 
other kitchen refuse, and miscellaneous scraps of every kind, which should always be given to the 
fowls, but never infringing the “universal rule” as to quantity which we have already laid down. 
Supposing there are more of such scraps and odds and ends than the stock can eat with the eager 
appetites we have insisted upon, the simple remedy is to get one or two more birds. 
The potatoes and sharps should always be given warm ; and whenever meal is prepared with 
water, we should advise its being mixed boiling hot. The warmth greatly promotes health and 
laying, especially in cold weather ; and the food being a little swelled, and in fact really half- 
cooked before it is eaten, it goes further and produces less excrement. The most celebrated and 
successful poultry superintendents we know always mix with boiling water; and where the 
contrary plan had been followed, and by their advice changed for this method, a marked improve- 
ment in the condition of the birds has invariably followed We are not now considering prize 
