FEEDING AND MANAGEMENT OF CHICKS 



redeeming feature about their diet is the occasional week-day- 

 lump of cheese or a Sunday milk pudding, which perhaps is 

 preceded by a small allowance of indigestible ham, pork or 

 hard beef, or bacon a little leaner than usual, and maybe an 

 egg in summer when they are plentiful. 



" I may say that my feeding account during that particular 

 season ran up very considerably beyond its usual limit, for I 

 was obliged to have recourse to feeding with eggs. Keepers 

 differ with regard to the question of egg-feeding as to 

 whether these oft-times expensive items are really necessary. 

 I am acquainted with the fact that some keepers make eggs a 

 staple part of their feed during the whole season. This I 

 believe to be an unnecessary expense. But it is useless to 

 disclaim entirely against the use of eggs, for men of science 

 tell us that a chick, before it leaves the egg, absorbs all the 

 yolk. This yolk is partly cooked by the hen sitting on the 

 eggs, but it is not then exactly in the hard-boiled state in 

 which we use it generally. It is advisable and necessary, no 

 doubt, to give Pheasants eggs, for a piece of yolk will always 

 tempt them to pick when nothing else seems to do so. Some 

 keepers do not give eggs hard boiled after the first few days, 

 but they simply use them in their raw state as part of the 

 necessary moisture with which to mix the food up. 



" While I am upon the egg question, I should like to say I 

 think one egg to twenty birds is about the proper proportion 

 of this very concentrated proteid food to be used in their diet, 

 and by the time that they are a week old I always give them 

 in the proportion of only one egg to about thirty birds. 



" It is an open question at present how much flesh-forming 

 food is really necessary on an average for the healthy 

 maintenance of animal existence, vitality and vigour, as the 

 amount seems to vary according to weather and circum- 

 stances. However, it is a great mistake (at least in bird 



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