FEEDING OP CHICKENS. 57 



After a day or two some grain must be given in 

 addition, and a little later a grain meal should alternate 

 with each soft meal, or nearly so. Chopped grits may be 

 given even the first day, and the whole grits when three 

 days old. Chicks seem to prefer grits to anything, but it is 

 too costly diet for more than a week or two. After that, 

 cracked and then whole wheat, dari, buckwheat, etc., will 

 be eaten. Barley is never relished till they get large, and 

 should not be used unless cracked into fragments, when 

 they will often eat it heartily. A little hempseed and 

 canary may be used when a treat is needed, as it sometimes 

 is ; but the staple grain will be as above. Millet is also 

 excellent for them. Unless chickens have a fair proportion of 

 grain, and access to small grit or gravel, their gizzards have no 

 adequate work, and trouble follows. 



Food must be given very often. For the first month 

 every two hours is not too much, though less will do ; from 

 one to two months old, every three hours ; and after that 

 three or four times a day will be sufficient. To feed very 

 often, giving just enough fresh food to be entirely eaten 

 each time, and with occasional changes, to keep the 

 appetite and digestion vigorous and keen, is the one great 

 secret of getting fine birds. If the meals are fewer, and food 

 be left, it gets sour, the chicks do not like it, and will not 

 take so much as they ought to have. 



After the first week the oatmeal can be changed for 

 cheaper food. We can well recommend any of the 

 following, and it is best to change from one to another, 

 say about every fortnight. An equal mixture of " sharps " 

 and barley-meal, or "sharps" and biscuit-meal, or fine 

 bran and Indian meal; or of bran, oatmeal, and Indian 

 meal. The last our own chickens liked much, and as the 

 cheap bran balances the oatmeal, it is not a dear food, and 

 the chicks will grow upon it rapidly. Rice is poor food, 



