FIRST LESSONS IN POULTRY KEEPING. 49 



Common Errors in Feeding Chicks. 



There is nothing mysterious, complicated or difficult about the proper feeding of young 

 chicks, and yet most beginners have a great deal of trouble with them. So before discussing a 

 few of the good methods of feeding let us have a statement of some of the more common errors 

 in feeding. 



1. When soft food is used, often too much of it is used. Too many meals of soft food are 



given, and not enough hard grain. 



People either do not know or do not appreciate the fact that the chick unlike the young 

 of mammals and of pigeons, has digestive organs that will take just the same kind of 

 food the adult fowls take. 



The old fashioned way of feeding chicks was to give them corn meal dough or merely 

 wetted corn meal three, four, or five times a day. Some chicks lived and grew on this 

 feeding because they had good range and exercise, and plenty of vegetable food and 

 insects, but they did not then and do not now make the growth on such feeding that they 

 do when fed a more appropriate ration. 



2. Too concentrated foods are used, especially meals corn meal and oat meal, and hard 



boiled eggs. 



Corn meal may be used alone, if baked in a johnnycake, with good results; but raw or 

 only partly cooked corn meal alone is too likely to be hard to digest. 



Oat meal and various oat preparations If fed heavily have much the same effects as corn 

 meal. One of the surprising things about opinions of feeding chickens is the persistence 

 with which some authorities cling to the idea that oats are an ideal and very complete 

 food, and oat meal the most desirable article for feeding young chicks; when the fact is 

 that chicks do not like it, and the sentiment in favor of it is traditional, and not based on 

 modern experience at all. 



Oat meal and corn meal mixed together, and with bran, make a good food for chicks. 

 The proportion of the meals to bran may be slightly greater for chicks than for fowls, 

 because the growing chick can more readily utilize an excess of nutritious matter than 

 the matured fowl can, but the difference in this respect in rations should be slight. 



Hard boiled eggs are often fed very heavily especially if fertility of eggs is poor and 

 when combined, as they too often are, with a ration which without them would be too 

 concentrated, they are likely to aggravate any digestive disorders that develop. 



3. Animal and vegetable foods are not provided as they should be. 



Many poultry keepers who are no longer amateurs are like most novices in being afraid 

 to feed meat meals and scraps to young chickens. There certainly is greater risk in feed- 

 ing them an article of poor quality, but a good grade of meat scrap or meal may be fed 

 quite as freely as to older fowls, though of course, if used in a mash or cake that is fed 

 several times a day to the chicks where the mash for fowls is fed but once, the percentage 

 of meat in the mash must be reduced or the chicks are fed more meat proportionately 

 than old fowls. 



In supplying green food to chicks the great majority of novices give it very irregularly, 

 and rarely in sufficient quantity. 



The three points stated and explained above cover, I believe, the most serious errors in the 

 feeding of chicks. When these are avoided the other faults in feeding may not show conspicu- 

 ously poor results. 



Methods of Feeding. 



Of these we wiM consider a few which may be taken as typical: 



1. Mash and grain feeds alternated. 



2. Baked cake and grain feeds alternated. 



3. Combination of 1 and 2. 



4. All dry feed small cracked and broken grains. 



5. Dry mash and dry grain. 



These are all simple systems calling for the use of only such foods as are used for the 

 old stock, or may be bought in bulk at about the same prices. The use of foods which 

 require entirely different bill of fare and mode of preparation for young chicks will not 



