I make this statement because of the experience I have had with country folks in buying their chickens for my feeding coops.  If they really consider to be fat the chickens which they have assured me were fat, then they do not know fat chickens.  A chicken can be fat to a degree without being so fat as he can or should be made for the purpose of marketing.

There is a flavor about a well-fattened, milk-fed chicken that no other chicken has.  Every interstice of his flesh is juicy and oily.  No part of him is tough, stringy muscle, as is the case if he is “farm-fattened” while being allowed to range where he will.

If you think your chicken is a fat one, pick it up and rub the ball of your thumb across its backbone about an inch behind the base of the wings.  If the backbone is felt clearly and distinctly the chicken is not fat.

I fatten my chickens in coops the floors of which are made of heavy wire having one-inch mesh; underneath the wire is a droppings pan, which is emptied every day.  My coops are built in tiers and long sections.  I have ninety of them, each one accommodating nine chickens.  I have enough portable feeding coops with wire bottoms and droppings pans underneath to enable me to feed, in all, about one thousand chickens at one time.

Chickens should be fed from ten to fourteen days in the coops.  I give no feed whatever to the chicken the first day he is in the coop, but I keep a supply of sour milk in the trough for him.  I feed my chickens three times a day.

At seven A.M.  I give them a fairly thick batter of meal, middlings or oat flour, about half and half, and sour milk.  I feed them only what they will clean up in the course of half an hour.  At noon I feed them again only what they will clean up in half an hour.  This feed is the same as the morning feed except that it is thinner.  About four o’clock I give them a trough full of the same feed, but so thick it will barely pour out from the bucket into the trough.

The next morning the troughs are emptied—­if anything remains in them—­into the big kettle where the feed is mixed for the morning feeding.  The idea is this:  More fat and flesh are made at night than in the daytime; therefore see that no chicken goes to bed with an empty crop.

About the eighth to tenth day force the feeding—­see to it that the chicken gets all it will eat three times a day.

By keeping an accurate account of the costs of meal, milk, and so on, I find that I can put a pound of fat on a coop-fed chicken for seven cents.  When one considers that this same pound brings twenty cents, and that milk feeding in coops raises the per pound value of the chicken from twelve to twenty cents, one must admit that feeding chickens is more profitable than feeding cattle.

Do not feed your chicken anything for twenty-four hours before killing it.  Do not worry about loss in weight.  The only weight it will lose will be the weight of the feed in its crop and gizzard, and the offal in its intestines—­and you are going to lose that anyway when you dress and draw it.  If you will keep the bird off feed for twenty-four hours you will find that it will draw much more easily and cleanly.