Tapley. " It is a bit of a problem, I admit. I have told
you of the soft food I give to my birds. I have a bucket
for each two dozen or thereabouts, because I mix the food
in the pails in which I take it to the fowls. My limit
is about fifty stock birds ; in fact, fifty all told, when I
have thinned out the chickens I do not want to keep. For
this flock the stock-pot holds a gallon, and I divide the
contents between two pails. I think I told you how much
bran, meat, and meal I put into each pail. The pailful
is sufficient for half the flock. Of grain I give them a
giDod handful a head of the mixture, rather more of oats,
and a bit less of wheat or maize, just a handful of grain
each bird for ' tea.'

"A handful is scarcely government measure, although
it's the easiest one when I am out feeding poultry. How-
ever, measuring the different foods in a half-pint cup, I
find that a handful (one of mine) is as follows : — Toppings
and barley meal mixed, or Sussex ground oats, within
half an inch of the top of the cup ; biscuit meal (the large
kind), two-thirds; broad bram, a topped-up cup; mixed
grain or oats, half a cup; maize or wheat, one-third.
