(From The Yorkshire Observer)
SIR, – Many outsiders are asking what thousands of hens will be like for the table after the modern craze for feeding up and intensive (unnatural stimulation) egg production has played its havoc with them?.
All disease has its root in artificial attempts to speed up Mother Nature with artificial foods, drinks, and medicines. When the results of this wholesale tampering with laws which no science understands or works with are known and manifest, further artifice in the shape of preventive medicine that does not prevent and healing arts that do not restore normality are exploited.
The prevention of all ills in every form of animal life, including the genus homo, lies in correct living; the cure of most diseases in corrected habits and feeding, in some cases prefaced by a spell on water, Natures cheapest, most common, and finest medicine.
I had 60 hens in October, 1916. Not one laid an egg for eight weeks, and they were well fed and stimulated with condiments. Some were ill, and many “authorities” gave me free (or professional) advice. Finally, I put half of them on a fast, with only on a fast, with only water as nourishment. The result was remarkable, for on the fourth day there were several eggs. I fasted the other half, with the same gratifying result – eggs, and plenty of them. The fast lasted in each case for a week.
Then I corrected the diet from “anything and everything” to nothing but whole grain wheat (for which they had to work in ashes for every morsel) twice a day and raw greens, plus what grass they could get in the orchards. Result, an average of 250 eggs a week from 60 hens for 18 weeks without a break, at a cost of 3/4d. (three farthings) per eggs – all of which went to the Morton Banks and the Bradford War Hospitals (1917).
There are lessons to be learnt from Nature. The first, second, and third are – work with Nature and she will do the work.
