56 FIRST LESSONS IN POULTRY KEEPING. 



My usual method of feeding chicks, from weaning until they go into winter quarters, is: 

 Morning. Mash. 



Morning. (As soon after the mash is fed as I get around to it, say, within an hour). 

 Wheat or cracked corn wheat if price is right. Enough is thrown broadcast in the 

 grass to give them something to look for, and still find good picking until late in the 

 afternoon. 



Afternoon. (About 4 to 5 o'clock, as I happen to get home from the office). A good 

 feed of fine cracked corn. If it is early so that the chicks have time to hunt for it, 

 and still get a good feed before 6 o'clock, I scatter the grain widely. If it is a little 

 late I throw it down in handfuls on the shorter grass. 



Evening. (Just as the chicks are going in for the night). All the mash they will eat. 

 Chicks will eat a good bit of mash after having had their fill of hard grain, and also 

 will eat quite freely of grain after having eaten all the mash they want. 

 To get the best possible growth the chick must be full fed daily. If it has good digestion, 

 and can take plenty of exercise, heavy feeding will not hurt it, unless the proportion of meat 

 scrap in the mash is too great. My observation, however, has been that very few err by 

 giving growing chicks too much meat. The general tendency is to give them too little, and 

 the digestive troubles which chicks develop during this period are generally due to crowding 

 and lack of exercise and green food combined with heavy feeding. 

 In other words: 



Under natural conditions overfeeding is almost impossible, while, 

 When chicks are confined in too restricted quarters we have to be careful in feeding 

 them, not because the feeding system is bad, but because the other conditions interfere 

 with digestion. 



Under artificial conditions we have to balance rations with a care we need not use under 

 natural conditions. 



The system of feeding given above differs from that I use for adult fowls only in that grain is 

 given rather more freely, and a second mash is given supplementing the last feed of grain. 

 Such feeding as this constitutes "forcing," or not, as you look at it. If chicks are given a meal 

 of only one kind of food, and we take what they eat that way and the results obtained as our 

 standards, then whatever induces them to eat more than by this system is forcing, and any 

 better results thus obtained are due to such forcing. 



But consider this, instead, from our own point of view. Do we not eat more when we have 

 a variety (not too great) at a meal than when the meal is comprised of but one or two plain and 

 perhaps not very palatable foods? As I look at it, by giving a variety we are not forcing the 

 chick, we are simply securing the fullness of development. All the feeding and heavy feeding 

 the chick can stand stops short of forcing. Forcing begins when the chick cannot stand the 

 ration given it, and its digestion gives out, or it goes down on its legs, and as has been said these 

 troubles are avoided by making conditions which admit of heavy feeding, better than by keep- 

 Ing conditions bad and making rations to suit faulty conditions. 



Different Rations for Different Purposes. 



From what hasjust been said about the relations between feeding and conditions the reader 

 is prepared to understand that the simplest way to arrange for feeding for different results is to 

 change the conditions, letting the system of feeding remain the same. 



There are two kinds of results to be considered in feeding chicks after weaning. 



1. Feeding chicks for stock purposes, that is, chicks to be used when mature for 

 layers or breeders. 



2. Feeding chicks to be marketed at the most profitable marketable size. 



For chicks for stock purposes we have to either give conditions or make a ration which they 

 can stand indefinitely. 



For market chicks the final consequences of feeding and conditions may be disregarded pro- 

 vided they are not reached before the chick is to be marketed. 



Suppose now a poultryman has a lot of chicks, the pullets and a few cockerels of which he 

 wishes to reserve for stock purposes, while the rest of the cockerels he will market as soon as 

 possible. 



