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Show "PO U U TRY 1 - - ' EGG EATING. If you know the cause and ti cure for hens eating their eggs, kindly publish pub-lish it in the poultry department of the next number of your paper, and oblige. u Yours truly, H. L. GF1FF1N. Answer by Prof. Geo. M. Turpin. Egg eating is one of the most frequent fre-quent and troublesome vices of the domestic fowl. In most cases, it undoubtedly un-doubtedly originates in the accidental breaking of an egg in the nest or on the floor of the coop, but when once started it rapidly spreads among the flock, one bird teaching another by example until a large portion of the eggs laid are purposely broken and eaten by the stock. Because the larger breeds are more clumsy and more apt to break their eggs than tha smaller varieties, the habit of egg eating Is more apt to get started among them. The whole fault, however, docs not I always lie with the fowls. The feed- J ing of an improper ration in which I there is an insufficient sup'ply of lime 1 or a large amount of condiments and 1 other stimulating foods is generally the cause of the production of soft or weak shelled eggs that are easily broken by the fowls and an abnormal I appetite for the material in the egg , lacking in the regularly supplied ration. ra-tion. When the habit has once started various devices are frcquenly resorted to for its prevention and cure. One of these is a cruivas nest with a hole in the bottom through which the egg may fall 'as soon as laid into a we1! padded space below. An ample supply of china eggs distributed in the nests and on the floor where .they can be conveniently and of course unsucceaa-fully unsucceaa-fully attacke'd by the oflfendems is also often effective. Another method is to remove part of the contents of an egg, through a stnalj opening and r$i place with ccyenne pepper or some other obnoxious substance, then set in a convenient place far the fowls to k taste. If the fowls arc provided, how-I how-I ever, with a proper ration including plenty of oyster shell or lime in some other form and also a sufficiently large number of attractive and comfortable com-fortable nest boxes well supplied with proper nesting material and plac cd in a somewhat darkened and secluded se-cluded part of the coop, the cause of the trouble will be reduced to a minimum. min-imum. If the few fowls that then acquire ac-quire the habit arc not considered too valuable for the dinner table and, as soon as discovered, ttrc dispatched for this purpose little loss from egg caters cat-ers usually need be expected. |