MAINE AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION. 4! 



they have hard feed enough to insure health and they can safely 

 peck away at the dry-meal mixture a mouthful or two at a 

 time when they seem to happen to think of it, and thrive. 

 This method has been considerably used in feeding April and 

 May hatched chicks. Many times the results from it have been 

 good. At other times, when the weather was dark and raw out 

 of doors and the little things were held inside, they would hang 

 around the troughs and overeat. They would grow rapidly for 

 a few days, then commence to go lame, eat little, and seek the 

 warm hover never to recover. 



Method 5. This consists in feeding the cracked corn, cracked 

 wheat, pin-head oats, and millet seed in the litter four times a 

 day, and keeping a trough of fine beef scrap within reach all 

 the time. Sometimes commercial chick feeds have been used 

 instead of the cracked corn, wheat, oats, and millet. By this 

 system the losses of birds have been small when the feeding 

 has not been so liberal as to clog the appetite. Much care is 

 necessary in adjusting the quantity of feed to the needs of the 

 birds. 



Other methods of feeding young chicks have been tried and 

 the results watched. Method i has been used for several years 

 and no other has been found that gives better growth or less 

 losses of birds. The only objection to it is the labor required in 

 preparing the feed. In the work of the Station Method 3 is 

 now preferred and used. The losses of chicks are small by 

 either of the methods. The labor in Method 2 is considerably 

 less than is required in Method i. Where either Methods I, 2, 

 or 3 are used the liability of injury to the chicks is much less 

 than when Methods 4 or 5 are followed. 



There are no mysteries connected with the raising of the 

 young chickens. Every chick that is well hatched out by the 

 twenty-first day of incubation should live, and will do so as a 

 rule if kept dry, at reasonable temperatures, and not allowed to 

 overeat. 



The most careful work of the poultryman during the whole 

 year is required in getting the chicks through the first three 

 weeks of their lives successfully. If they are vigorous up to the 

 fourth week, there is little liability of injuring them thereafter 

 by any system of feeding, if it is only generous enough and they 

 have their liberty. 



