INSTITUTE PAFERS. 137 



After the chicks are hatched they should not be fed for at 

 least 24 hours and preferably 36, or even 48 hours. I would 

 much rather they would go 48 than to feed them before 24, 

 as in the last process of hatching the yolk of the egg is absorbed 

 by the dhick's body and constitutes the contents of the intestines 

 which nature intends to support the chick for the first 24 

 hours. To start the digestive tract at work before this, has a 

 tendency to upset the entire system and cause diarrhoea and 

 many other ailments w'hich, in many cases, cause the death of 

 the chick. The first feed should be light grit to start the giz- 

 zard at work, or, in other words, furnish the chick with its 

 teeth, as the gizzard is where the chick's teeth really are. The 

 best feed I have found for this purpose is the shells from 

 which the chicks were hatched. Place these in the stove oven 

 and heat them to a light brown ; crumble fine and place them on 

 a board before the chicks for a few hours and let them play 

 and work among them and they will pick up quite a few of 

 them. They are then ready for their first feed which should 

 be dry oatmeal, bread crumbs, or any easily digested light i6od 

 for the first day or two, with water or milk before them. Af- 

 ter two or three days they may be fed on the commercial chick 

 foods that are sold ready mixed by most of the poultry feed 

 dealers. 



I have always found that these pullets should be grown and 

 their bodies developed and the ovaries developed, on the same 

 kind of feed we use to make the egg after the hen is grown; 

 hence, after the chicks leave the baby stage, feed the dry egg 

 mash and the scratch foods, made up of as many different 

 grains as possible. The best dry mash I have ever found for 

 egg production, as well as for growing the pullets to maturity, 

 is composed of 2CX) pounds of wheat bran, 200 pounds of wheat 

 middlings, 200 pounds of ground oats, 100 pounds of corn 

 meal, 100 pounds of linseed meal, 100 pounds of alfalfa meai, 

 TOO pounds of beef scraps and 40 pounds of charcoal. Keen 

 this before the growing chicks dry and allow them all the exer- 

 cise they will take; if on a farm, unlimited range. If confinel 

 to yards, make them scratch the grain out of deep litter, wtiich 

 should be also fed sparingly, morning and evening, in addition 

 to the dry mash constantly before them in hoppers or troughs, 

 so constructed as to prevent waste. 



