VIGOR 85 



Exercise 



Vigor comes from exercise as well as from the proper food. 

 Scratching is by far the best exercise for chicks. It keeps the or- 

 gans of digestion in a healthy condition ; it gives the chick a good 

 appetite; it broadens the back, giving plenty of room for and de- 

 veloping the egg organs, strengthens the muscles and enlarges 

 the frame. 



How shall we give them work? The best way, of course, is 

 to give the mother hen range. Chicks on range with the mother 

 hen rarely acquire bad habits. It is chicks in the brooder that get 

 into mischief, that quarrel and scrap, peck each other's toes and get 

 to be cannibals. The best way of preventing mischief is by bed- 

 ding the brooders, one or two inches deep, with alfalfa hay, cutting 

 to half-inch lengths in a clover cutter. The little chicks will eat 

 some of this, and they will scratch in it for seed of the chick feed 

 all day long. This chaff, or finely cut hay, hides the toes so they 

 will not be tempted to peck each other's toes. Another method for 

 exercise is planting the runs with wheat or barley- The chicks 

 will scratch up or pull up the green sprouts. Hanging a head of 

 lettuce up in the brooder house will also afford both amusement 

 and exercise. 



Never let chicks be crowded at night. Many a chick that might 

 have been a prize winner is disqualified, has off-colored feathers 

 simply from having been crowded or bruised by a larger chick 

 treading on it. A bruise, even a slight one, will often result in a 

 white feather on a colored fowl or a black or red feather on a white 

 fowl, and overcrowding has the same effect. 



More About Vigor 



Vigor has always been one of my "hobbies." I have written 

 much about it but must add a little more. Breeding for vigor is 

 one of the problems most interesting in poultrydom. It might 

 not be difficult if we could closely imitate Nature, but we are de- 

 manding much more or our hens than Nature does, and here is the 

 point where we fail. 



Much of the lack of vigor, the low hatches, weakness and mor- 

 tality of chicks, and the inferiority of the mature fowls may be 

 traced to the so-called "intensive" methods and of forcing the hens 

 to produce an abnormal number of eggs with a consequent break- 

 ing down of the constitution of the hens. The intensive system of 

 keeping fowls in small quarters and feeding them with stimulating 

 rations has contributed largely to the lowering of constitutional 

 vigor in many large flocks of hens. 



There are in nearly all flocks hens that differ in vigor. There 

 are weak fowls and strong fowls in all the different breeds and 

 what we want to aim for is the strong, vigorous hen that will digest 

 the most food and lay the most eggs. Let us study how to get 

 these hens. First, cull closely; that is, get rid of, market or eat 

 those fowls that do not come up to the mark in vigor. Secondly, 

 let us mate together only those that have constitutional vigor. It is 



