POULTRY RAISING 51 



surplus birds, in case you go in the fancy stock, you 

 can build one row of houses same style as your laying 

 houses, only one-fifth smaller. Use sixteen-foot plank, 

 and make your house eight feet wide and sixteen feet 

 long, outside measure, in each case. Make your house 

 four feet high at eaves, same as your laying houses. For 

 the roof, saw a sixteen- foot board in three pieces, and 

 saw rafters five feet one inch long. Build it the same 

 as laying houses, with wire netting partition, and you 

 have an ideal house for the business. Put in windows 

 the same size as you use for your laying houses, one 

 in each side in center of each department ; also a slide 

 under each window for letting them out. 



Use a good indoor brooder for these houses. I can 

 sell you a good brooder for $5 to put in these houses — 

 one that will raise your chicks. You cannot put up too 

 many of these houses, for I consider this the ideal way 

 of raising chicks. 



Now handle these chicks just the same as I have out- 

 lined for the others, except you use these houses in 

 February and March, when you cannot plough the 

 ground, so you will start these chicks same as I have told 

 you, except on the seventh day you begin feeding pro- 

 cessed oats to your chicks, and give them all they will 

 eat of them from then on, and see that they are never 

 out of chick feed. It will be a pleasure to see them 

 grow, and sick chickens will be rare under this system 

 of feeding — and your cost in raising them will be very 

 light, as you will find their main feed is processed oats 

 at 8 to 10 cents a bushel. 



When your chicks are large enough to think of roost- 

 ing, and need heat no more, you should market the cock- 

 erels for squab broilers, if possible, at eight to ten weeks 

 old, and remove your pullets to your laying houses. 



