EIGHTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART X. 609 



needs more thorough, painstaking investigation and discussion than this 

 one — "The Care of the Chicks." 



The above statement is substantiated by the fact that not more than 

 50 per cent of the chicks that are hatched the country over ever reach 

 maturity or even marketable age. In fact we believe it safe to say that 

 nearly 50 per cent of the chicks hatched each year die before they are 

 four weeks old. If this is true — and we believe it is — it seems to us no 

 further argument is needed to prove that the careful investigation of this 

 subject is of the utmost importance. 



It is a comparatively easy matter to hatch almost any number of 

 chicks, but an entirely different matter to raise the larger per cent of 

 them to maturity. There are almost numberless causes for the great 

 mortality among the chicks each season, among which may be mentioned 

 lack of inherited vitality, improper feeding, bowel trouble, lice, exposure, 

 white diarrhoea, etc., and occasionally the little fellows die off from causes 

 that are not explainable. 



In a majority of cases the trouble is due to either carelessness or 

 ignorance on the part of the caretaker, and the lives of the chicks are 

 simply sacrificed, while in other cases they die in spite of the fact that 

 they receive the very best of care and attention. Even those who have 

 made a scientific study of the matter covering a period of years tell us 

 that ocasionally their chicks die from causes that are inexplainable. 



How many of our readers can tell us the cause of white diarrhoea in 

 little chicks? We venture to say that not one poultryman in a thousand 

 can tell with any degree of certainty what causes it, though there are 

 hundreds who will make a guess at it. Numerous theories have been 

 advanced, and numerous remedies recommended, but we have yet to hear 

 of a sure cure for the disease when once it gets a foothold in a flock 

 of chicks. 



Prof. James E. Rice, of Cornell University, has for several years been 

 making a careful study of the cause and cure — or prevention — of the 

 numerous diseases that cause the death of hundreds of thousands of 

 chicks yearly, and his investigations have led him to believe that one 

 great cause of mortality is the failure on the part of the digestive 

 organs of the chicks to properly digest the yolk of the egg remaining in 

 their bodies at the time of hatching. Mr. Rice says: 



"If we can solve this one problem — the cause of the anaemic condition 

 of chicks that follows this failure to absorb the yolk of the egg — more 

 money will be saved in one year to the farmers and poultry raisers of 

 New York state than it costs to run the State Agricultural College for 

 ten years." 



Mr. Rice says he is confident that environment has little, if anything, 

 to do with the disease, as has been generally supposed. When he first 

 began his investigations this theory was worked upon and followed up, 

 but as the investigation progressed it was found that the same conditions 

 existed under almost any and all circumstances — in dry places, in damp 

 places, in light brooding houses and in dark brooding houses; in fact he 

 found no conditions under which this trouble did not exist. Mr. Rice is 



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