OVER-FAT HENS.

King Country Chronicle, Volume V, Issue 311, 12 November 1910, Page 3

OVER-FAT HENS.

- ■ • At no time in a hen's life should she be allowed to become over fat, unless she is being fitted for market. Then the fattening process should be speedy, occupying not more than two or three weeks. Continued longer, it results in liver trouble, eruptions, and apoplexy. Carelessness instead of over care is generally the cause of birds getting too fat. If the ration is carefully balanced to give the right percentage of protein, carbo-hydraate and fat, also, if the protein is in the most easily assimilated form, and due attention given to palatability and succulence, fowls will not become too fat. These things a lazy poultryman does not do. Protein, needed to produce eggs, and make frame and muscle, is supplied by meat in the most easily assimilated form. Summer conditions suggest succulent feeds such as cabbage and mangels. A lazy man will furnish plenty of grain and water. If he is a generous lazy man, he'll give an over supply and several kinds of grain. If this is in a litter of sweepings from the barn loft and the litter is deep enough to give biddy exercise, she may work off some of the fat in scratching, and may find pieces of clover to help take the place of grass; but even then such a ration is heating, and will not encourage the free passage of the eggs. No one thing (says an American Poultryman), not even meat, increases egg-laying where an otherwise wellbalanced ration is fed, so much as cabbage does. It should be hung, so that biddy can jump for it, and she can eat it better if she can bite it off the head herself. If cut and scattered on the floor, much of it is wasted. Eggs are sometimes retained in the passage of over fat hens until the accumulation of lime causes them to ossify. In such cases the hen's egglaying days are ended. Eggs are largely made of water; the juices that carry them on their way are mostly water, and the nervous propulsion comes from the satisfaction the fowl feels in getting food that tastes juicy and summery, Nature designed hens to lay only ir» summer, «r,d only by furnishing summer conditions and succulent food can they be fooled into laying in winter.