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Show WHAT AND HOW TO FEED. (By H. A. Nourse, Editor Poultry Herald.) When fresh eggs are scare and high In price every poultry keeper wants to know how to feed his hens to produce the most eggs and still how to feed them without unnecessary expense. Feeding which produces good results Is almost invariably profitable, but if anything Is fed which does not help to produce such results the feeding of that should be dispensed 'with, if it costs anything. It is a good plan to follow nature's methods as far as possible. Wo know' that in the natural order of thing.c hens laid only in warm weather anc that at such times they could find wild grains, seeds, tender roots, bugs,, worms and Insects, tender green grass, small sharp pieces of gravel, etc., and this made up a ration which sustained the body of the wild hen and provided, in addition, the material of which to mako eggs. In order to get tho best results in egg" production in winter we must copy as near as we can the natural method. To take the place of the seeds, wild grain, etc., we feed the grains of commerce, com-merce, including corn, wheat, oats, barley and rye, both whole and ground, , and in the case of corn, cracked. Thei ground grains are mixed with water or milk to a crumbly state and fed in troughs in the form of damp mashes, once a day, as much as the flock will eat up In a few minutes. Sometimes . these mixtures are fed dry In hoppers and kept before tho fowls conptanUy or part of each day. Thek whole and cracked grains are led in a Utter of stray, haw, leaves or something of that kind, so that the fowls will bo obliged to scratch them out and in tliat way obtain oxorclse which in nature they obtained by running about In search of food. To take the place of bugs, worms and insects, which nature provided to make up the meat part of the ration we furnish commercial beef scrap cut fresh bone, fish scraps, meat trimmings trim-mings from the kitchen, etc Usually ' the beef or fish scraps is mixed in the mash and the cut bone and meat trimmings trim-mings fed separately or mixed vrilh a little bran, to servo as a lunch. To take the place of tho tender green grass and other such succulent vegetable vege-table material which the hens found in the fields, In their warm weather laying period, we provide cabbage, mangel beets, potatoes, poor quality apples and steamed, green curled clover and ajfalfa. Of these tho clover and alfalfa nro usually mixed with the mash when tho mash Is fed damp, or they may be fed separately. Sometimes Some-times clover and alfalfa is put into the pens dry and the fowls pick off the leaves. To take tho place of sharp gravel, which serves as grit, wo furnish fur-nish the commercial grit made for that purpose and we keep it before them in boxes or hoppers so that they can sup-ply sup-ply themselves at will. |