Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 134, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 June 1915 — VARIETY OF FOOD BEST FOR FOWLS [ARTICLE]

VARIETY OF FOOD BEST FOR FOWLS

Not Only Influences the Number of Es ft, but Governs the Quality. The egg yield can be controlled by the feed and the manner of feeding. When fresh-laid eggs have an offensive odor when broken or cooked it is time to examine the quality of food the fowls are getting. Onions, fish, manure piles and the like have a strong tendency to cause a bad smell and flavor in eggs. The gluten products are residues of

corn left in the manufacture of glucose. Gluten meals consist mainly of hard or flinty portions after the bran, the germ or chit of the corn kernel and part of the starch have been removed. Malt sprouts are the dried shoots from germinated barley. Brewers’ grains from which the starch has been removed by growth and fermentation. In fresh state they contain too much water to justify paying a very large price. Dried they furnish about as much protein as the malt sprouts. Hominy feed or hominy chops consists of the hull, germ and part of the starch of corn grains, and contains less starch, about the same amount of portein, and more fibre and fat than cornmeal. Pea meal is not quite so good a feeding stuff as the average gluten feed. It contains about one per cent less protein, 3 per cent less fat and nearly three times as much fibre. In 100 pounds of grain six pounds of ash are found. The ash material of wheat is almost the same as corn. A bushel of corn contains about one pound of crude ash. One hundred pounds of oats contains three pounds of ash, being twice as much as the same amount of wheat or corn contains. Wheat furnishes more material for the white of eggs than corn. A bushel of wheat contains about one-tenth more protein than a bushel of corn but about one-helf less fat. The New York Experiment station found that cockerels fed meat gained 56% per cent more weight, and such pullets laid eight weeks earlier than those without meat, but otherwise on a similar diet Meat-fed ducks were out of sight of those deprived of it. Again the experiment was tried with a more careful attention to a supply of mineral matter for those without meat, and it was found vegetable protein could largely take the place of meat in case of chickens, but not with ducks. The ancient fish-eating habits of the latter are still too near the surface. It never occurs to the average farmer that the effect of a long-continued diet of grain is as injurious to fowls as to cattle, nor that the concentrated grain food gives the best results when diluted or mixed with some bulky succulent materital.