"What Grit is For, And Why Fed."

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 8280, 23 October 1905, Page 7

" What Grit is For, And Why Fed."

you have good luck with your •chickens," I hear so often upon receiving a visit from some would-be chicken breeder. ■"My chickens, after several weeks, get # diarrhoea, weak legs, and frequently give up the ghost." I have heard this complaint so often that I have felt it my duty to try and throw a little light upon the subject. In the first place I object to the term " good luck," as I claim that if my chickens thrive it is because success is earned, not

accidental, and is a consequence of intelligent care from the beginning. Poor chicken ! that has so much to show in its young life of painful interferences with its development, due to the ignorance of its unreasoning breeder ! How many breeders, then, are really rational ? Few, to be sure! The greater number are satisfied to follow the method of their grandfathers fostered up by tradition, and impervious to any new instructive ideas.

In the interest of rational hen-culture, we have a right, to demand absolute knowledge on the part of the breeder. We generally expect the plant—culturist and the horsebreeder to |iave had a fundamental training in their profession, to have learned their trade thoroughly, through a long apprenticeship, but the wisdom of the chicken — breeder is supposed to come in one night. And the results are such as must follow

such lack of training. One-half, if not more, of the young chickens, die in the stages of their existence, while a wHarge percentage of those that survive the " children's diseases," fall victims to wasting processes, due alike to an ignorance of ground principles. This can only be otherwise when the breeder has learned what the hen peculiarly is. First, after having learned exactly what kind of a plant we wish to cultivate, we must then study each department of its being: 1. Anatomy. 11. Physiology. 111. Hyigiene, and what is most important, the nutritive functions—only after mastering the latter details should we dare to think of chicken culture. These theoretical studies can, and must be carried out in the practice. To this object we must select that one strain or breed in which our interest is centred, and to this animal apply our theory in practice. By anatomy we understand the construetionof the organised body for a knowledge of which we may consult any well-written, popular work upon the subject- but in the matter of physiology I wish to offer some new ideas which years of study and experiment have convinced me are sound facts. By physiology, we understand the study of the functions of living bodies and their organs. I, and we may say all breeders of fowls, have been taught that the hen must eat a large number of small stones, which serve the purpose of grinding the corn or grain taken into the crop, thereby fitting it "WMiov digestion. This statement is simply repeated by every teacher and writer upon hen culture, and taken for granted to be true. To investigate the statement or to prove its truthfulness seems to occur to none of these gentlemen. I wish to assert that never was greater folly written or expressed than the above teaching. But "Hold," I hear some one say; " Prof. So-and-So, of the celebrated Government experiment station, has said ' the hen must eat stones to grind her corn,' and it must be so." Now, dear reader, I have no desire to rob you of your poetry, but I will state a few facts and ask you to consider them. A fewyears ago the German millers petitioned the Reichstag to admit foreign srain free of duty, as the domestic grain was so difficult to grind, and gummed up the mill-stones, due to the softness of the grain. What can we learn from this ? 1. That soft grain is not easily ground. 2. That all the corn in the crop of a fowl is so softened that grinding is out of the question. 3. That the stones in the stomach (gizzard) must have great resistance in order to exert a pressure upon the corn. The walls of the stomach, being soft and yielding, make such resistance impossible, so that it fIX is mere babble to talk of grinding corn in the stomach. We ought to find the little mill-stones in the excrement of the hen, but as yet no breeder, nor even the professors of the agricultural experiment stations, with their microscopes or X-rays, have been able to find them therein.

From these facts we must conclude that the stones are for other purposes than grinding. That the hen digests them very comfortably is be3 r ond doubt, and that they are assimilated and incorporated in the secretions of the body from which the organs are nourished and renewed.

For what purpose then are stones, oyster shells and other gritty substances taken into the stomach ? There again the professor comes forward and tells us that " the hen needs lots of lime, chiefly to make eggshells,"—so now we know.

Ah! what becomes of the many stones and shells when the hen lays no eggs ? This no professor has told us, but gives us only the fairy tale of grinding. Now, I will endeavour to explain the truth of the matter.

Have you ever known hens to lay many eggs during moulting ? I think not. But they eat, you know, many stones at this time. Consider well and tell us from whence

comes the power that enables the hen to

renew her coat of feathers. What, then, is the feather? As Prof. says in his book, " Das Leben " : " The Flint speaks to us as follows :—I dwell in the form of glass in the feather of birds, and when man confines the hen so that she has access to neither quartz nor granite, then she becomes infested with ) - lice, she, loses her feathers and dies. So your canary bird dies in his cage when he gets no flint sand which he needs as a supporting nutritive material from which to build up his peculiar blood albumen. So speaks the fieldstone. " The mechanical pulverizing or grinding of the food is quite out of the question. The elastic walls of the stomach, and the position of the embedded stones, render it impossible *Qg for that to occur; furthermore, the mineral i matter serves the same purpose to the bird that common salt serves to man, namely, to effect the chemical combination of the food material. The ashes of feathers are, we know, rich in silicate of potash and lime, therefore rich in vitreous matter as glass is a combination of silica with at least two basic substances. We know, moreover,

that a strong shaft of feathers will cut like glass, a fact due to the presence of silica. " As vitreous matter also serves as a concentrator of heat as well as a non-conductor of electricity, we see that the purpose of storing up such material in the bird's plumage for protection in winter is clearly evident. "As silica and potash, or field stones, are

necessary to make feathers, so we see that the young chick, having only hair at first, gets feathers only when it first picks up granite stuff for itself. " Tho hen hawk differs from the chicken at its birth, and as its parent furnishes no silicate of potassium in the egg, the young hawk generally gets feathers only when it devours tho half-grown feathers of the chicken. The ostrich also swallows pieces of glass, stones and flint, obtaining in this way the silica necessary to form its feathers. The northern Eiderduck and Ptarmigan have to thank tho porphyr and glass which they consume for their warm coat of feathers. The parrot, too, and the climbing birds, living among the palm trees and gnawing the silicaceous barks, owe the brilliancy of their plumage to the refractory vitreous substance in the feathers, and when, in captivity, they are deprived of silicaceous barks and seeds whose shells contain silica, the feathers invariably fall out."—(From Hensel's " Das Leben.") And the professors " lose their hair " in their effort to make tho statements which they serve up lo the people, pass for real science. Is it to be wondered at that the country people often shake their heads in doubt about the professors ? AYhen " science," that is, the prevailing teaching of the present, serves us up such, pabulum, are we not compelled to think for ourselves ?