...I want a farm...Amherst, Dartmouth, Bowdin and Connecticut Wesleyan are going to give me a living next year for a couple of weeks [teaching] in each of them. The rest of the time I shall be clear away from the academic, feeding pigeons hens dogs or anything you advise for the pleasure or the profit in it...I ran away from two colleges in succession once and they took revenge by flattering me back to teach in college. Now I am running away again and it looks as if they would come after me.

--Robert Frost in a letter, May 1926. Quoted in Robert Frost: A Pictorial Chronicle. Kathleen Morrison, 1974. p. 58

Finding the formula for the perfect chicken feed is a quest that produces the same intensity as designing the perfect chicken coop.

Frost wrote a story featuring a farmer obsessed with the question, "What are you feeding?"

This exhibit includes historical materials about the best practices of the time for giving poultry access to the most nutritious food. The final sections include articles describing current USDA research on poultry nutrition and links to the research units working in this area of poultry science.

 (Click any image in this exhibit to get more information, including access to full text)