The Dollar Hen Part 13

The so-called science of food chemistry is really a rough approximation of things about which the actual facts are unknown.

Such knowledge bears the same relation to accurate science as the maps of America drawn by the early explorers do to a modern atlas.

Like these early efforts of geography the present science of food chemistry is all right if we realize its incompleteness. In practice, the poultryman, after a general glance at the "map," will find a more reliable guide in simpler things.

I am writing this book for the poultryman, not the professor, and because I state that the particular kind of science wherein the professor has taken the most pains to teach the poultryman is comparatively useless, I fear it may arouse a mistrust of the value of science as a whole. I know of no way to prevent this except to point out the distinction between scientific facts and guesses couched in scientific language.

When a scientist states that a hen cannot lay egg sh.e.l.ls containing calcium without having calcium in her food, that is a fact, and it works out in practice, for calcium is an element, and the hen cannot create elementary substances. When the same scientist, finding that an egg contains protein, says that wheat is a better egg food than corn because it has the largest amount of protein, that is a guess and does not work in practice because protein is not a definite substance, but the name of a group of substances of which the scientist does not know the composition, and which may or may not be of equal use to the hen in the formation of eggs.

All substances of which the world is made are composed of elements which cannot be changed. When these elements are combined they form definite substances with definite proportions entirely independent of the original elements. The pure diamond is carbon. Gasoline is carbon and hydrogen. Several hundred other things are also carbon and hydrogen. Sugar is carbon combined with hydrogen and oxygen.

These three elements make several thousand different substances, including fats, alcohol and formaldehyde. Hydrocyanic acid is carbon combined with hydrogen and nitrogen, and is the most deadly poison known.

The failure of food science is partly because we do not know the composition of many of the substances of food and partly because these substances are changed in the animal body in a manner which we do not understand and cannot control.

Conventional Food Chemistry

The conventional a.n.a.lysis of feeding stuff divides the food substances in water, carbohydrates, fat, protein and ash. The amount of water in the body is all-important, but, with the exception of eggs during incubation, I confess I prefer to rely upon the chicken's judgment as to the amount required.

The carbohydrate group contains starch, sugar, cellulose and a number of other things. Carbohydrates const.i.tute two-thirds to three-fourths of all common rations and nine-tenths of that amount is starch. The proposition of how much carbohydrates the hen eats is chiefly determined by the quant.i.ty of grain she consumes.

Of fats there are many kinds of which the composition is definitely known. The amount of fats the hen eats is unimportant because she makes starch into fat. The protein or nitrogen containing substances of the diet is the group of food substances over which most of the theories are expounded. The hen can make egg fat from corn starch or cabbage leaves because they contain the same elements. She cannot make egg white from starch or fat because the element of nitrogen which is in the egg white is lacking in the starch and fats.

The substances that have nitrogen in them are called protein. They are very complex and difficult to a.n.a.lyze. In digestion these proteins are all torn to pieces and built up into other kinds of protein. Just as in tearing down an old house, only a portion of the material can be used in a new house, so it is with protein and laboratory a.n.a.lysis cannot tell us how much of the old house can be utilized in building the new one.

In practice the whole subject simmers down to the proposition of finding out by direct experiment whether the hen will do the work best on this or that food, irregardless of its nitrogen content as determined in the laboratory.

The results of many experiments and much experience has shown that lean meat protein will make egg protein and chicken flesh protein and that vegetable protein pound for pound is not its equal. I know of no results that have proven that the high priced vegetable foods such as linseed meal, gluten feed, etc., have proven a more valuable chicken food than the cheapest grains.

With cows and pigeons this is not the case, but the hen is not a vegetarian by nature and high priced vegetable protein doesn't seem to be in her line. Of the three standard grains there is some indication of the value of the proteids for chickens and of the following ranks, 1st oats, 2d corn, 3d wheat.

The false conceptions of the value of wheat proteids has been specially the cause of much waste of money. Digestive trials and direct experiments both show that, as chicken foods, wheat is worth less, pound for pound, than corn and yet, though much higher in price, it is still used not only as a variety grain, but by many poultrymen as the chief article of diet. Wheat contains only 3 per cent. more proteid than corn. The man who subst.i.tutes wheat at one and one-half cents a pound for corn worth one cent a pound pays 17 cents a pound for his added protein. In beef sc.r.a.p he could get the protein for 5 cents a pound and have a very superior article besides.

Milk as a source of protein ranks between the vegetable proteids and those of meat. It is preferably fed clabbered. The dried casein recently put on the market is a valuable food but is not worth as much as meat food and will not be extensively utilized until the demand for meat sc.r.a.p forces up the price to a point where the casein can be sold more cheaply. Meat sc.r.a.p, to be relished by the chickens, must not be a fine meal, but should consist of particles the size of wheat kernels or larger. The fine sc.r.a.p gives the manufacturer a chance to utilize dried blood and tankage which is cheaper in quality and price than particles of real meat.

The last and least understood of the groups of food substances is mineral substance or ash. Now, the chemist determines mineral substance by burning the food and a.n.a.lyzing the residue. In the intense heat numerous chemical changes take place and the substances that come out of the furnace are entirely different from those contained in the fresh food.

The lay reader will probably ask why the chemist does not a.n.a.lyze the substances of the fresh material. The answer is that he doesn't know how. Progress is made every year but the whole subject is yet too much clouded in obscurity to be of any practical application. At present the feeding of mineral substance, like the feeding of protein, can best be learned by experimenting directly with the foods rather than by attempting to go by their chemical composition.

In practice it is found that green feed supplies something which grain lacks, presumably mineral salts. Moreover we know that such food fed fresh is superior to the same substance dried. This may be because of chemical changes that occur in curing or simply because of greater palatability.

The other chief source of mineral matter is meat preparations with or without ground bone. Recent experiments at Rhode Island have attempted to show the relative value of the mineral const.i.tuents of meat by adding bone ash to vegetable proteids, as linseed and gluten meal. The results clearly indicate that mineral matter of animal origin greatly improves the value of the vegetable diet, but that the latter is still sadly deficient. Of course the burning process used in preparing the bone ash may have destroyed some of the valuable qualities of the mineral salts. Practically, we do not care whether the value of animal meal be due to protein, mineral salts or both.

In time the world will become so thickly populated that we cannot afford to rear cattle and condemn a portion of the carca.s.s to go through another life cycle before human consumption. By that time the necessary food salts will doubtless be known and we will be able to medicate our corn and alfalfa and do away with the beef sc.r.a.p.

The poultrymen will do well, however, not to count on the chemistry of the future, for the chemist that makes the "tissue salts" for the hen may manufacture human food with Niagara power and fresh eggs will come in tin cans.

How the Hen Unbalances Balanced Rations.

Let the poultryman who figures the nutritious ratio of chicken feed try this simple experiment. Place before a half dozen newly hatched chicks a feed of one of the commercial chick feeds. When they have had their fill, sacrifice these innocents on the altar of science and open their crops. He will find that one chick has eaten almost exclusively of millet seed, another has preferred cracked corn, another has filled up heavily on bits of beef sc.r.a.p and mica crystal grit, while a fourth fancied oats and granulated bone. In short the chick has, in three minutes, unbalanced the balanced ration that it took a week to figure out. This experiment can be varied by placing hens in individual coops and setting before each weighed portions of every food in the poultryman supply man's catalogue.

There is only one kind of feeding that will balance rations and that is to feed exclusively on wet mash. This is successfully done in the duck business, but the duck is a Chinese animal and his ways are not the ways of the more fastidious hen.

In dairy work the individual preferences of the cows are given attention and their whimsy catered to by the herdsman. I know of nothing that makes a man more feel his kins.h.i.+p to the beast than to hear a good dairyman talk of the personalities and preferences of his feminine co-operators.

With commercial chicken work, humanly guided individual feedings is out of the question, though, if used, it might hasten the coming of the two-egg-per-day hen. Individual feeding with the hen as sole judge as to what she shall eat, which means each food in separate hoppers and free range, is the best system of chicken feeding yet evolved.

The duty of the poultryman is to supply the food, giving enough variety to permit of the hens having a fair selection. In practice this means that every hen must have access to water, grit (preferably oyster sh.e.l.l), one kind of grain, one kind of meat, and one kind of green food. In practice it will pay to add granulated bone for growing stock. One or two extra grains for variety and as many green foods as conveniences will permit to increase palatability--hence increase the amount of food consumed, for a heavy food consumption is necessary for egg production.

As corn is the cheapest food known, let it be the bread at the boarding house and other grains the rotating series of hash, beans and bacon. The grain hopper may have two divisions. The corn never changes but the other should have a change of grain occasionally.

The extent of the use made of the various grains will be determined by their price per pound.

The proportions of food of the various cla.s.ses that will be consumed is about as follows:

Of 100 lbs. of dry matter: 8 to 12 lbs. meat; 66 to 75 lbs. grain; 15 to 25 lbs. green food.

The profits of the business will be increased by supplying the green food in such tempting forms as to increase the amount consumed and cut down the use of grains.

The methods we have been describing in which various dry unground grains, beef sc.r.a.p and oyster sh.e.l.l, each in a separate compartment, are exposed before the hen at all times, together with the abundant use of green food, either as pasture or a soiling crop, is the method of feeding a.s.sumed throughout this book.

The hopper feeding of so-called dry mash or ground grain mixture has been quite a fad in the last few years. The tendency of the hens to waste such food has occasioned considerable trouble. They are picking it over for their favorite foods and trying to avoid disagreeable foods. This difficulty is relieved when the food be separated into its various components and the hen offered each separately. As a matter of fact, there is no occasion for feeding ground feed except in fattening rations and here the wet mash is desirable.

The use of the products of wheat milling has been the chief excuse for such practices, but unless these get considerably lower in price per pound than corn they may be left off the bill-of-fare to advantage. The great use made of these products in poultry feeding was chiefly a result of the attempted application of the balanced ration idea, but as has already been shown the efforts to raise the protein ratio with grain foods is generally false economy.

The old-fas.h.i.+oned 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 cla.s.sification and description of the numerous ailments by which individual fowls pa.s.s 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 pa.s.sed 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.

The usual formula of "burn or bury deeply" is somewhat troublesome, unless you have a furnace running. A covered pit is more convenient if far enough removed from the house that the odor is not prohibitive. A post with a tally card may be planted near by. This part of the poultry farm may be marked "Exhibit A," and shown first to the visitor during the busy season. If he is one of those prospective pleasure and profit poultrymen who propose to disregard all facts of biology and economics of production, you may save yourself the trouble of showing him the rest of the plant.

Unfortunately, this scheme is not open to the poultryman who has breeding stock for sale.