24 
The Illustrated Book ol Poultry . 
given over and above it. It is that surplus which, in the way we have seen, may be either 
productive, simply inoperative, or actually prejudicial. These things may seem truisms, but then 
right understanding will greatly pave the way to success in practice. 
We need not stop to prove that as an egg contains animal food in its most concentrated 
natural form — a fact well known to all physicians — its regular production must demand a regular 
and sufficient supply of food adapted to produce it. There is an amazing difference between 
the appetites of hens which are not laying and those which are, or are about to commence. 
Hence, the starving system of feeding poultry can never afford any return ; and fowls which 
are only allowed to eat “ what they pick up,” will, in England at least, rarely produce anything 
worth speaking of. In America and the Colonies, where grain is little thought of, and abounds 
to some extent all over the farm, or in the English stack-yard at harvest seasons,, it may 
be different ; but as a rule, chance feeding will always result in very chance receipts, added 
to which, birds thus left to forage for themselves will in many cases lay away, where their 
eggs can never be found. But in general the mistake is the other way ; and with respect 
to adult fowls, we have not the slightest hesitation in saying that at least three-fourths of 
all kept by the middle classes, excepting those of experienced “ fanciers,” have far too much 
to eat. Farmers’ fowls get far too little, other people’s mostly the reverse. They get fat ; 
and a fat hen is never a good layer, while a pampered male bird is lazy, if not altogether 
useless for purposes of breeding. 
As regards the nature of the food to be given, also, there is little sound knowledge 
upon the subject amongst most who keep poultry. We can well remember our own school- 
boy experience, when we kept fowls in a small stone-paved yard, disposing of the eggs to 
our maternal parent, and paying for the food out of our own private exchequer. Our first 
idea was that grain was the only and the natural food of poultry, and we accordingly fed 
them three times daily with as much as they would eat of that commodity. Had any one then 
hinted that our fowls were not properly fed, we would have scorned the idea with indignation. 
But it was so, and it is so in the scores of similar cases. Our birds would not thrive; they did 
not lay well, and often died. By degrees we found out why, and eventually, in that same 
small yard, made our poultry speculation pay , acquiring there, on those stones and amongst 
those difficulties which surrounded us on all sides, much of that practical knowledge of fowls, 
their ways, their wants, and their habits, which has been most useful to us in after life. 
Grain is the natural food of fowls ; but so is grass, so are worms ; and it would be as 
reasonable to feed birds in confinement exclusively on either of these as on grain alone. 
Moreover, a fowl in its state of nature lives under altogether different conditions. It is only 
intended to lay some dozen or so eggs in a season, whereas we wish to get about ten times that 
number. The wild fowl, again, finds its food grain by grain ; and that everlasting mill called the 
gizzard, called into incessant action, always reduces the grain as swallowed, so that the crop is 
rarely, if ever, distended. The bird has literally to work, and work hard, for all it finds ; so that 
all its functions are kept in the most vigorous exercise. Under such conditions, with the grass and 
worms it also picks up, the grains or seeds which forms its principal food do maintain the creature 
in the highest health and condition ; though, as we have seen, the egg production is not such as 
would yield a profit to the poultry-keeper. These things again are truisms ; but we repeat them 
because we constantly find persons who are for “following nature;” and the theory has a certain 
plausibility if not exposed. If we “ follow nature,” we must follow her altogether, and we must 
be content with natural results, which in this case would be one nest of eggs per annum ; if we are 
to keep them in confinement, and to get many times the amount of eggs, we must change our diet 
