EGG-PRODUCING.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3514, 12 October 1882, Page 4

EGG-PRODUCING.

' Fanny Field,' whose exceptional achievement in egg-producing during the cold months has been heretofore chronicled in these columns, reports to the Prairie Farmer her methods of feeding, about which some of our readers have inquired. Hens must be supplied with egg-making material, and this must not be consumed as fuel to keep them warm. Success presupposes comfortable and clean quarters. Corn is fattening, but on this ration alone, even in abundance, ' there will not be eggs enough to pay for the shelling of the corn.' 'My way of feeding fowls in winter—and it works wonderfully well —is to give them a warm breakfast eveiy morning just as soon as they can see to eat, a few handfuls of grain afc noon, and a full feed of grain at night. The warm breakfast is made of regetables, turnips, beets, carrots, or potatoes, boiled and mashed up with wheat bran ; or oatmeal scalded with skim milk ; or refuse from the kitchen boiled up, and the soup thickened with bran ; and when sweefc apples are plentiful, we boil them and mix them with cornmeal — sometimes one thing and sometimes another. We don't believe in feeding on one thing all the timo, and the liens don'fc believe in it eithor. I don't think that my biddies need the noon food because they are hungry, bnt;l give it to them to make them scratch—for exercise, and to keep them out of mischief. I scatter it around among the litter under the shed, and let them dig it out. This 'lunch' is generally oats or buck wheat, and once in a while sunflower seed. At night I generally feed with corn ; but if J could get wheat cheap enough, I should feed that at least half of the time. My fowls hare water or milk by them all the time, and green food is supplied by fastening cabbage-beads up where tho fowls can help themselves. Sometimes, when somebody has time to attend to it, we give them a change of green food in the shape of raw turnips or sweet apples chopped fine. Two winters ago I took a new departure on the meat question, and now, instead of fussing to cook it and deal out a little at a time, 1 just hang up a piece and let the fowls eat all they want- When they have meat within reach all the time there is not the slightest danger of their eating too much. I get chepp meat from the butcher, and I am sure I am paid twice over for the outlay.'—The Field.