Experiments in Feeding Laying Hens

Abstract

The Department of Agriculture has been conducting feeding experiments with laying hens for a continuous period of eight years and has now over 1,000 hens in tests of this kind. Fair sized pens averaging from 30 to 50 hens in each pen are used in all of these tests and all of the fowls are now being trapnested.

The mash which has given us the best production uniformly during the last three years is made of 4% bran, 4% middlings, 26% meat scrap and 66% corn meal. This mash was the result of experiments where the hens were allowed to select their own mash ingredients. This is the proportion of these different feeds which they ate during one year. Several pens, both of Leghorns and of Rhode Island Reds, of 30 hens each have averaged from 140 to 155 eggs apiece where this mash was fed. While this mash seems . . .