MAINE AGRICULTURAI, EXPERIMENT STATION. 37 



weather is not too cold. They must not get cold enough to 

 huddle or cry, but must come out from under the hover fre- 

 quently. 



The floor of the brooder is cleaned every day and kept well 

 sprinkled with alfalfa meal. So far as we are aware sand may 

 be used for this purpose, but it has never been tried at this 

 Station. The floor of the house is covered with clover leaves 

 or with hay chafl: from the feeding floor in the cattle barns. 



Feeds and Feeding, 

 feeding young chickens. 



The best method of feeding young chicks is at present a mat- 

 ter of some uncertainty, and it is doubtful if there ever will be 

 general agreement as to the one best method. One condition, 

 however, appears to be imperative, and that is that the young 

 things be not allowed to overeat. A number of difl^erent meth- 

 ods of feeding young chickens have been used at the Station in 

 the past. The most useful of these methods follow. 



Method I. — Infertile eggs are boiled for half an hour and 

 then ground in an ordinary meat chopper, shells included, and 

 mixed with about six times their bulk of rolled oats, by rubbing 

 both together. This mixture is the feed for two or three days, 

 until the chicks have learned how to eat. It is fed with chick 

 grit, on tlie brooder floor, on the short cut clover or chaff. 



About the third day the chicks are fed a mixture of hard, 

 fine-broken grains, as soon as they can see to eat in the morn- 

 ing. The mixture now used has the following composition : 



Parts by weight. 



Cracked wheat IS 



Pinhead oats (granulated oat meal) 10 



Fine screened cracked corn 15 



Fine cracked peas 3 



Broken rice 2 



Chick grit 5 



Fine charcoal (chick size) . 2 



It is fed on the litter, care being taken to limit the quantity, 

 so they shall be hungry at 9 o'clock a. m. 



