The old-fashioned wet mash which the writer does not recommend because of the labor involved, is, nevertheless, a fairly profitable method of poultry feeding.  It is used in the Little Compton district of Rhode Island and was also used in the famous Australian egg laying contests elsewhere described.  Personally I would prefer feeding ground grain wet, especially wheat bran and middlings, to feeding it dry.

The scattering of grain in litter so generally recommended in poultry literature is all right and proper, but is rather out of place in commercial poultry farming.  It is used on the large poultry plants with the yards and long houses, but is not used on colony farms or in any of the poultry growing communities.  I should recommend littered houses for Section 6 and the northern half of Section 3 (see Chapter IV), but with warmer soils and climate where the snow does not lie on the ground it would add a labor expense that would very seriously handicap the business.

The systems of poultry feeding that are commonly advertised are based either on some patent nostrum or a recommendation of green food in novel form, such as sprouted oats.  The joke about poultry feed at 10 cents a bushel, absurd though it may seem, has caught lots of dollars.  To take a bushel of oats worth 50 cents, add water, let them sprout and have five bushels costing 10 cents, is certainly a wonderful achievement in wealth getting.  The only reason a man couldn’t run a soup kitchen on the same principle is that he can’t do a soup business by mail.  Sprouted oats are a good green food, however, though somewhat laborious to prepare.  I should certainly recommend them if for any reason the regular green food supply should run out.

The points already mentioned are about all the practical suggestions that the science of animal nutrition has to offer the poultryman.  The discussion of feeding from its technical viewpoint is sufficiently covered in the chapter on “Farm Poultry” and the discussion of the management and economics of various types of poultry production.

CHAPTER VIII

DISEASES

For the study of the classification and description of the numerous ailments by which individual fowls pass to their untimely end, I recommend any of the numerous books written upon the subject.  Some of these works are more accurate than others, but that I consider immaterial.  The study of these diseases is good for the poultryman, it gives his mind exercise.  When a boy in high school I studied Latin for the same purpose.

Don’t Doctor Chickens.

For the cure of all poultry diseases when they have passed a point when the fowl does not eat or for other reasons recovery is improbable, I recommend a blow on the head—­the hatchet spills the blood which is unwise.