The importance of Allowing fowls to feed themselves.
--When fowls have access to grain all the time, we see them eat in the morning only a few kernels at a time, and after an hour or so, they will take a few kernels more, and thus they pass the entire day by eating a little at a time, and very often.
The philosophy of their eating so frequently and but a little at a time is, the food has a sufficient time to become softened in the crop before it passes into the gizzard, and it has sufficient time to be thoroughly ground and digested; whereas, when fowls are not allowed to have access to their food, but are fed once or twice a day, they become very hungry, and swallow as much as their crops will hold at one feeding.
Now for several hours, no food will be softened sufficiently to pass into the gizzard, consequently their grist mill must stand idle. --Now the moistened grain swells and distends the crop of the fowl, and it feels by no means comfortable.
Shortly all the food in the crop is in the proper condition to be ground, and the result is, that it is forced through the gizzard with so much rapidly that it is not half ground, and therefore cannot be half digested; and if it is nutriment or egg-producing material, can be extracted from it. Nor is the greatest drawback attending feeding fowls only once or twice a day. When a fowl fills his crop at one feeding, before the food can possibly get out of it, it begins to heat up, and derangement and ill-digestion follow, very much as is the case when we fill our stomachs as full as they can be crammed.
The way to feed fowls, and particularly those that are laying, or being fattened, is to allow them to have free access to food at all times.
In this way they can always supply the demands of their stomachs and grinding apparatus, exactly as food is needed; and they will fatten more rapidly, or lay more eggs, and consume much less food than they will if they are fed, as they will eat twice a day.
My practice now is, and always has been, to allow my fowls to have free access to corn in the ear all the time, both
summer and
winter.
Of course they are obliged to shell it for themselves.
Occasionally we feed them on screenings, and when we have no screenings we take a peck or so of wheat, and as much
buck wheat, oats, barley or rye, and mingle them together, and mix the grain with some chaff, so that they will not be as liable to consume as much of it at once as if it were clear grain.
When we have an abundance of milk we place a vessel containing it where they can find it any time.
In warm weather, after it has become lowered, they will consume, during the day, much more of it than one would suppose; and milk is as good to fatten poultry and make chickens grow, as it is for pigs, and it is one of the very best kinds of food for any kind of poultry, when they are laying.--
Cor.
Country Gentleman 
