CARE OF BROODER CHICKS 



The hatching of chicks is but half the battle, for eggs from good 

 vigorous parents will hatch with but little trouble if a good standard 

 incubator is used and if the directions with it are followed. How 

 about the raising of the chicks after they are hatched? 



The poultry papers agree that there is not a subject pertaining 

 to poultry culture that needs more thorough, painstaking investiga- 

 tion and discussion than the care of the chicks, and it is said that 

 not more than fifty per cent of the chicks that are hatched the coun- 

 try over reach maturity or a marketable age. 



What are the principal causes of mortality among chicks; how 

 can we combat them and what are the essentials in the successful 

 raising of chicks? 



There are numberless causes for the death we deplore among 

 these are diarrhoea, bowel trouble, lice, improper feeding, impure 

 water, over heating or chilling and exposure to the elements. 



Feeling sure that the mortality in chicks is caused in a majority 

 of cases by the carelessness or ignorance of the caretaker, let us 

 discuss this subject and glean from the best authorities some ideas 

 about it as far as we may in one short article. 



Expert Opinion 



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 any- 

 thing, 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 confident, however, that the 

 investigations being conducted will ultimately solve the problem. 



Until this problem is solved we shall have to be content with the 

 theories of the different breeders and hatchers, and as one I feel 

 confident from my own experiments and experiences that the deaths 

 from diarrhoea, or in fact almost all the deaths of brooder chicks 

 before three weeks of age, come from faulty incubation. The tem- 

 perature has been either too hot or too cold, usually the former, or 

 the ventilation has been at fault, or the chicks have been chilled in 



