1906.] THE NEW POULTRY CULTURE. 1 29 



Instead of this common-sense method of feeding chicks, 

 the usual way, when the old hen brings off her brood, is to 

 shut her up in a coop and dump down on a board in front of 

 the coop all the wet dough she and the chicks ought to eat in 

 a day's time. Some of this is eaten, but most of it is trampled 

 into a door mat for the youngsters, and in an hour's time looks 

 much like the dirt surrounding the coop. Exposed to the hot 

 sun, it does not take long to start the process of fermentation, 

 and we soon have the germs of bowel trouble growing at the 

 rate of forty miles an hour ! The books say that chicks should 

 be fed five times a day, and the nervous owner argues that if 

 five times is good, six times is better, and soon comes around 

 with another mess of wet dough which he deposits on the top 

 of the first " charge," and there is now a sandwich of dough 

 and dirt. In a few days' time the chicks begin to drop off one 

 by one, the common manifestations of bowel trouble, such as 

 pasting up behind and watery diarrhoea, are in evidence, and 

 the owner begins to " darn the chicken business " or else he 

 blames the man from whom he purchased the eggs for having 

 inbred stock, and we have another of the many cases of " the 

 chicken business don't pay nohow ! " 



" Perhaps our friend's more painstaking neighbor improves 

 upon this method and bakes the mash into a sort of bread, 

 which is a decided improvement, because it removes the greater 

 part of the water, but at the same time it considerably increases 

 the labor. His chicks certainly do better, and make a very 

 good growth for a few weeks, and he begins to boast that the 

 solutions of the poultryman's troubles lies in cooking the food, 

 so he invests in an amateur bakery and bakes everything. His 

 chicks apparently continue to thrive, -but as the weather gets 

 hotter he notices some bowel trouble among the half-grown 

 birds ; these die and he shouts that cholera has struck him, 

 and writes to the editor of a poultry paper, who tells him it 

 probably is cholera, as the symptoms he describes look like 

 that. After changing the method of feeding once or twice, 

 and losing half of his flock, he gets around to feeding hard 

 grain and pulls the remainder of them through, although they 

 are not now as large, nor nearly as healthy as chicks raised 

 under the natural method and without the assistance of a bake 

 shop ! " 



Agr.— 9 



