482 ARTIFICIAL PROPAGATION OF GROUSE 



Do not open the incubator more than is necessary during this period. 



If egg development and incubation conditions are right, the hatch should be complete within 

 18 hours of the time the first egg is pipped. 



The new arrivals do not require food or water until they have been transferred to the 

 brooder for, like the camel's hump, nature has provided the chick with a large unabsorbed 

 yolk in which much of the food for the first two or three days is stored. When the chicks 

 are completely dry they may be weighed, wing-banded and placed in a small clean box, the 

 bottom of which has been covered by a soft material, such as cloth. If the weather is cold, 

 the box may be warmed and wrapped in a blanket to make certain that the chicks do not 

 become chilled in transit to the brooder. 



Brooding of the Chicks 



In any extensive wildlife research project, one or two ba£Bing problems are to be found 

 which common sense tells us can be solved but which may elude the best efforts of the re- 

 search worker for many years. So it is with the low rate of survival during the brooding 

 period. The largest loss experienced in raising grouse still occurs before the chicks are four 

 weeks old. 



The problem is puzzling, for chicks held under apparently identical conditions and fed the 

 same ration may thrive or die without apparent reason. To all appearances the same con- 

 ditions that encourage the survival of 60 per cent of the chicks started one year will result 

 in but half that number pulling through the next. Many of the dead birds seem to be in 

 good physical condition and without evidence of disease. 



Following the lead of earlier experimentors, the Investigation carried out exhaustive tests 

 of brooders and brooder houses, of hover operation and of all the various other items so 

 important in the care of chicks. Feeds and feeding techniques were repeatedly checked and 

 changed with the aid and advice of collaborators skilled in the solution of nutritional diffi- 

 culties. For two years Dr. L. C. Norris of the New York State College of Agriculture 

 carried out reconnaissance studies of nutritional requirements of grouse chicks for the In- 

 vestigation. Great progress has been made in reducing certain recognizable sources of loss, 

 such as failure of the chicks to start feeding promptly, lung inllammation brought about by 

 chilling and nutritional disorders due to improper feed. Other difliculties, notably feather 

 picking and cannibalism and the danger from disease were also among those to which sat- 

 isfactory answers were secured. But the underlying combination of causes of tliis early mor- 

 tality remains the largest unsolved and disconcerting mystery in the field of artificial grouse 

 propagation today. 



A dozen new methods have given high promise the first year in which they w^ere tried, 

 only to prove stubbornly unreliable in succcrdinp (rials. Rcnicnibcrinp that in the wild the 

 normal mother grouse loses up to 30 per cent of her brood during the first two weeks after 

 hatching, it has even been suggested that grouse may possess a lethal gene similar to that 

 recognized in some strains of poultry. 



It is axiomatic in brooding grouse chicks that the chances of success tend to he inversely 

 proportional to the number of birds cared for. Ofltimes a single brood is raised with the 

 loss of only one or two individuals. 



The answer, as far as is known today, lies in unremitting care and attention to the de- 

 tails incident to feeding and brooding the chicks. Visitors at the Center have sometimes de- 



