FEEDING AND MANAGEMENT OF CHICKS 



" With regard to the hour of cooping them, we will say 

 9 P.M., with the last feed at 6 p.m. ; and as to the morning 

 liberation, any keeper watching his wild charges in the small 

 hours of the summer mornings will see the hens cautiously 

 leading forth their respective broods as early even as 5 a.m. 

 So here again comes in the fact that these birds are the wild, 

 free denizens of the country game fields and captivity is un- 

 natural to them, so they will chafe and fret under it, and the 

 keeper late on his ground will assuredly lose his birds. 



" As birds get older, I may say that with judgment the 

 food must begin to be adapted more to adult needs, so that 

 eggs are discontinued and greaves substituted, which of course 

 will have to be mixed with rice and other starchy constituents 

 to prevent diarrhoea. For the last feed at night, if boiling 

 water is poured on to some dry grain and covered with a 

 sack so as to imprison the steam, it will be in a nice soft con- 

 dition. Of course, boiling the grain is best, but often time is 

 very limited to allow much of that rule to be followed. Birds 

 are thus gradually adapted to the adult food of hard corn and 

 raw natural seeds by the time they are about a month to six 

 weeks' old. At the present time there are many good dry 

 chick foods which greatly facilitate this last operation before 

 they are set free in their natural habitat — the woods." 



There is no denying the advantages of supplying all in- 

 gredients comprising the food of young Pheasants thoroughly 

 scalded, or cooked for preference, particularly while the broods 

 are young, although it is hardly necessary to prepare them in 

 this way after the birds are half grown. If an ingredient is 

 scalded it should be allowed time to soak completely through, 

 for biscuit-meal is often used without the precaution being 

 observed, with the consequence that each nodule contains a 

 hard core very indigestible. Greaves and other dried meals 

 M 177 



