MAINE AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION. 39 



tion by the partial use of hard feed, and the gizzard must not be 

 deprived of its legitimate work and allowed to become weak by 

 disuse. 



By the time the chicks are 5 or 6 weeks old the small broken 

 grains are discontinued and the two litter feeds are wholly of 

 screened cracked corn and whole wheat. Only good clean 

 wheat that is not sour or musty should be used. 



When young chicks are fed as described, the results have 

 always been satisfactory if the chicks have not been given too 

 much of the scratch feed and if the dishes of ground material 

 have been removed immediately after the meal was completed. 

 The objections to this system of feeding are the extra labor 

 involved in preparing the eggs, mixing the feed with water, 

 and removing the troughs at the proper time. 



Method 2. — This is like Method i, except that fine beef scrap 

 is used instead of boiled eggs and the mash is not moistened. 



Early in the morning the chicks are given the hard feed on 

 the floor litter as described in Method i. At 9 o'clock they are 

 fed a mixture having the following composition : 



Parts by weight. 



Rolled oats 2 



Wheat bran 2 



Corn meal 2 



Linseed meal i 



Screened beef scrap i 



This is given in the plates or troughs, and the dishes are re- 

 moved after ten minutes' use. 



At 12.30 the hard grains are fed again, and at 4.30 or 5 the 

 dry-meal mixture is given to them for half an hour or left until 

 their bedtime. The meal being dry, the chicks can not eat it as 

 readily as they can the &gg and rolled oats or the moistened 

 mash. For that reason it is left for them to feed upon longer 

 than when moistened with the ^gg and water, but is never left 

 before them more than ten minutes at the 9-0'clock feeding 

 time. The aim is to give them enough at each of the four 

 meals so that their desire for food may be satisfied at the time, 

 but to make sure that they have nothing left to lunch upon. It 

 is desired to have their crops empty of feed before feeding 

 them again. When treated in this way they will have sharp 



