THS POULTEY BOOK. 
93 
this time they will have become very hungry, and will eat with avidity ; whereas, if 
food is placed before them on their first imprisonment, they often refuse it for 
some time. The best food for them is coarse oatmeal mixed with scalding milk 
or water : barley-meal is good, but not equal in its fattening properties to oatmeal ; 
this is evident from the fact that the latter contains 6 lbs. of fat in every hundred, 
the former only 2 lbs. The birds should be fed at regular intervals. The first meal 
should be given very early — at 5 o’clock in summer, at daybreak in winter ; the 
second at noon ; the last just before dusk. Discretion should be exercised in the 
quantity given. It should be fully as much as the fowls can eat, and no more. 
Should any be left from one meal to another, it should be thrown out to the 
other fowls, the trough scalded out, and fresh food given. Great care should be 
taken to prevent the troughs becoming sour. In order to do this they should 
frequently be scalded, and dried in the sun. As a variation in diet causes an 
increase of appetite, many feeders have a spare trough with a little barley in it 
placed before the coops. If it is considered desirable to use any animal fat, the 
hard trimmings of loins of mutton will be found most desirable. They should be 
chopped up and mixed with the meal before the scalding liquor is poured on ; or, 
still better, may be boiled in the liquor before it is poured over the meal. A 
supply of clean water and some coarse sand or fine gravel are necessary. Many 
persons omit the latter ; but as the due grinding action of the gizzard cannot go 
on without it, it is absolutely necessary to the proper digestion of the food. In 
places where the millers prepare the finest flour, usually known as pastry 
whites,” they have a very superior kind of fine middlings or thirds. This is not 
unfrequently sold, in London at least, under the name of coarse country flour. 
It is cheaper than the best oatmeal, and may be in part advantageously substituted 
for it. The most convenient mode of using it is to bake it until it becomes quite 
hot, v/hen, if cold water is poured on it, it becomes a crumbly mass. The common 
sharps or coarser middlings will not answer, as it contains too small a portion of 
nutriment, and purges the fowls. 
On this system of feeding, a fowl will become perfectly fatted in from a fort- 
night to three weeks at the outside. When fatted it should be immediately killed; 
for, not only is it unprofitable to keep it any longer, but it deteriorates very 
rapidly, losing weight and becoming hard and coarse in the flesh. Before being 
killed, the fowls should be kept for fifteen or sixteen hours without food or water. 
If this precaution is not taken (and it is unfortunately often neglected), the food in 
the crop and intestines ferments. When this is the case in summer, the fowl in a 
few hours turns green, and the value is much lessened. After being killed, the 
fowls should be allowed to become quite cold before they are packed for the 
market; and they should be sent without being drawn, as a fowl killed when empty 
of food and water keeps better untouched. The absurd plan of drawing the birds 
by cutting a long slit in the side, as is the custom in some parts of England, 
detracts considerably from the value of the bird in other places. 
If it be thought fit to follow the practice of cramming, which, however, we have 
