WITH 4200 HENS 67 



Carrying Baby Chicks 



To those who carry their own chicks a word of advice 

 might be in order: The chicks must have air and warmth. 

 If you are stacking up a lot of the familiar 100-chick 

 carrying boxes in a motor car be sure the boxes are criss- 

 crossed in such a way that each box will have air. The 

 boxes should set level, otherwise the chicks will be 

 jammed to the lower section of the box. If necessary 

 place strips of wood between the boxes. As to warmth, 

 the chicks will supply all they need for the trip, but this 

 will not protect them against the draft made by the 

 moving car. Excepting in hot weather it will be neces- 

 sary to put a blanket over the load to keep off the draft, 

 and even in hot weather a curtain of some kind should 

 be hung in such a way as to stop the draft. It should 

 be kept in mind that newly hatched chicks differ in no 

 essential respect from a very young baby so far as sus- 

 ceptibility to draft is concerned, and the writer's observa- 

 tion is that a careful mother who carries the baby in a 

 motor car quite generally has it completely covered. 



Should you meet with an accident on the road or if it 

 is necessary to stop for as long as 10 minutes you should 

 remove the blanketing the draft stops with the car. We 

 heard of an instance where a poultryman carrying a load 

 of one thousand or twelve hundred chicks was delayed 

 half an hour. He forgot to remove his blankets ; and he 

 smothered more than half of the chicks. On the other 

 hand we have known of many cases where chicks were 

 chilled by the draft and a heavy mortality was the re- 

 sult, which was of course blamed on the hatcher and the 

 stock he hatched from. 



