POULTRY. 
269 
Like most birds known both in a wild and domestic state, the latter ex- 
ceed the former in weight and magnitude. 
FEEDING POULTRY. — It is a bad practice to under feed poultry. From 
the very first they should have good and solid food. Steamed potatoes 
and other roots mixed with meal of the various grains, form a cheap 
and excellent food. It is not necessary to soak, grind, or boil the grains 
for fowls, however, where they can have free access to pebbles to supply 
their own grinding-mills, by which they turn their own grain into flour. 
But when pent up and unable to procure what they so much need, meal, 
and boiled and crushed food should then be given them. The poultry- 
house, however, should be constantly supplied with fine gravel, lime, and 
pulverized charcoal — articles indispensable to the health and improve- 
ment of fowls. Green food should be given them daily. Cabbages hung 
where the fowls can pick at them are a good article. In winter, chopped 
potatoes, turnips, etc., are the only convenient green food. When prac- 
ticable, fresh animal food should be frequently given fowls that are shut 
up, or at seasons when they cannot procure insects or worms. A bul- 
lock’s liver, thrown in the yard, is a cheap and good food for them. 
Indian corn is an excellent food, and may be freely given. 
Cayenne pepper, indeed all descriptions of pepper, especially the 
cayenne in pods, will be found a favorite with fowl, and will be greedily 
devoured by them ; it acts as a powerful stimulant, and remarkably 
promotes laying; and, when mixed in a ground state with boiled meal, 
will be found productive of the best effects. In this, however, as in 
every thing else, let moderation be your ruling principle. 
A different system should be adopted in treating poultry for the table, 
and for the laying and breeding department. 
With regard to feeding fowls for the table, much depends on circum- 
stances. Spring chickens may be put up for feeding as soon as the hen 
ceases to regard them, and before they lose their first good condition. 
In their fattening-pens they will have no opportunity of picking up 
little pebbles; their mills, therefore, will be inoperative, and the diet 
must consequently be pultaceous, viz., bread and milk, barley-meal, or 
oatmeal and milk, and meal of steamed potatoes mixed with barley- 
meal. Some recommend the occasional addition of a few grains of 
cayenne pepper, or of dried nettle-seeds, which the foreign feeders are 
in the habit of giving. Where chickens have the run of a good farm- 
yard, and plenty of food, it is a work of supererogation to pen them for 
fattening; they will be ready at any time for the table, and their flesh, 
being in its healthy state, will be sweet and juicy, delicately tender, and 
sufficiently fat. Some, indeed, prefer flitted fowls ; but this is a matter 
of taste ; to many the greasy fat of poultry is very disgusting. 
The practice of cramming poultry by the hand is quite common, 
though not to be recommended. In France they have machines by 
which one man can cram fifty birds in half an hour. It is somewhat 
on the principle of a forcing-pump. The throats of the birds are held 
open by the operator until they are gorged through a pipe, which con- 
veys the food from a reservoir below placed on a stool. In fifteen days, 
fowls are said to attain the highest state of fatness and flavor by this 
feeding. In addition to the ordinary paste of barley-meal, or meal made 
