More 
Scraps 
And Still 
More 
You can gradually increase the quantity of meat food as your birds 
grow older; but you must be careful not to feed too much to the young 
birds, because—owing to the high percentage of protein concentrated in 
meat—it would satisfy their appetites and cause them to neglect their 
grain. This would keep down their weight and therefore their value as 
broilers. 
You may begin to feed also about the 8th day some of your waste 
lettuce leaves, cabbage leaves, celery tops, beet tops, etc., to which should 
be added about the 14th day a part of your left-over mashed potatoes, 
fried potatoes, and cereals. All these—and almost any other left-over 
food you may have—should be run through the meat chopper and fed to 
the chicks in small quantities. 
For the first week or two it will be better to chop up fine your green 
stuff (cabbage leaves, lettuce leaves, celery tops, etc.). After that gather 
it up, tie a string around it, and hang it where the chicks will be able to 
get it only by jumping up and pulling off a little bit at a time. This will 
give them good exercise. 
Do not worry in the least because your flock will not be able to eat 
all your table scraps at this time. As the birds grow older they will require 
more and more of the particular kind of nourishment to be found in table 
leavings. 
This process of feeding with baby-chick grain, meat scraps, and vege¬ 
table table leavings should be followed until the chicks are about 8 weeks 
old. The first feed of the morning and the last feed in the evening must 
positively be grain food. At noon table scraps should be fed. 
As the birds begin to come into the broiler age, it will be well to include 
in their table scraps boiled potatoes, macaroni, cooked oatmeal—every¬ 
thing you have, in fact. This will aid greatly in making fat. 
Once the birds have reached the age of 3| months, they should be fed 
all the table scraps possible. The last feed in the evening, however, 
should always be of grain in the litter. Of course if you have not enough 
table scraps to satisfy the appetite of the flock, you must make up the 
shortage with grain food. 
Right here I want to call your attention to the feeding of one waste 
that occurs occasionally in every household—namely, sour milk. This, 
if fed continually, will cause a 25 per cent, increase in the egg yield over 
the yield of hens fed chiefly on grain and water. 
When you have any sour milk, put it on the back of your stove in a 
vessel or dish and allow it to come to a curdled or clabbered state. Then 
put it in a pan and place it where the hens can get at it. Any time you 
have sour milk, clabber it and feed it to your hens. Should they fail to 
eat it all today, they will finish it tomorrow or some other day. 
Don’t be afraid that because there may be a little pepper or salt in 
your table scraps, they will be harmful to the chicks. Pepper and mustard 
actually stimulate laying; and salt—though it must not be fed in lumps— 
is good in small quantities. 
Your next concern will be with the time when the birds have come into 
the laying age—between their 5th and 6th months. 
14 
