=Feeding.= The feeding of a small flock of fowls is a very simple process. The table and kitchen waste of an ordinary family will furnish all the soft food that they need, and usually enough green food to prevent their suffering for lack of such foods if no other provision is made for supplying them. This waste should not be carried from the house as it is made, and thrown on the ground for the fowls to pick out of the dirt. A better way is to provide a covered jar large enough to hold the accumulation of this material for a day. Into this may be put all the leavings from the table, except such things as orange and banana peelings, large bones, and pieces of fat meat. Once a day, at whatever time is most convenient, the contents of the jar should be mixed with as much corn meal and bran (equal parts by measure) as will take up the water in them and make a moist but not sloppy mash. This should be fed in a clean trough. If the trough stands high enough from the floor to keep the contents clean, it will do no harm if more food is given than the birds will eat up at once, but the quantity given should never be so great that it will not be eaten before the next feeding time. Most people find the morning the most convenient time to give the mash. If the mash is fed in the morning, a small feed of hard grain should be given about noon, and a more liberal one an hour or two before sunset. Some poultry keepers feed the different grains separately; others mix them before feeding. Advocates of different practices often imagine advantages for that which they favor, but no advantage can be demonstrated for either. Wheat and cracked corn are the grains most used in this country; they are about equal in feeding value. As corn is nearly always cheaper than wheat, the usual practice is to feed about twice as much corn. When the grains are mixed, one part (by measure) of wheat is used to two parts of cracked corn. When they are fed separately, it is usual to feed the wheat at noon, as the light feed, and the corn in the evening, as the heavy feed. All the common grains except rye make good poultry foods. Why fowls do not like rye is one of the puzzles of poultry keeping. In some countries it is used for poultry to a greater extent than in the United States, and fowls forced to eat it here have done very well for short periods, but will not eat it readily if they are accustomed to other grains and can get enough to sustain life without it. Fowls do not like dry oats so well as corn and wheat, but have not such a dislike for them as for rye. They are very fond of oats soaked in water and partly sprouted. [Illustration: Fig. 75. With curtains closed] [Illustration: Fig. 76. With one curtain open] [Illustration: Fig. 77. As an open-front house] POULTRY HOUSE USED AT THE CENTRAL EXPERIMENT STATION, OTTAWA, CANADA. (Photograph from the station)