20 I'OULTEX FEEDING AND FATTENING 



of bread crumlis. This is set before them for their first 

 meal. To be sure, biddy gobbles about all of it. No 

 matter. She has worked hard, half starving herself to 

 bring forth this promising little flock, and a good feed 

 now will help to make her contented and happy, con- 

 sequently a better mother. 



Feed a little and often is the best method; every 

 two hours, say five times a day, till the chicks are five 

 weeks old. See that no food is left in the sun to sour 

 after they have eaten; remove it all. ISTothing causes 

 more bowel looseness and dysentery than sour food. 



Our chief foods for the first five or six weeks are 

 coarsest oatmeal slightly moistened with sweet milk, 

 and waste bread from hotels and restaurants. This 

 bread consists of bread, rolls, tea and corn cakes, etc., 

 and is an excellent food for chickens. We spread it on 

 the attic floor to dry, and then grind it to coarse 

 crumbs in our bone mill. The first feed in the morning 

 is bread crumbs slightly moistened with milk or water; 

 the second, about nine o'clock, is oatmeal moistened as 

 above ; about eleven, bread crumbs again, about half -past 

 one, oatmeal, and about four o'clock a little cracked 

 wheat or cracked corn. 



There has been much dispute as to how soon dry 

 grain or cracked grain should be fed to chicks. An 

 article upon chicken feeding, by Mr. W. Vale, in 

 Feathered World (London), says: "The chick cannot 

 be too soon supplied with food that will require the 

 grinding power of the gizzard to be properly brought 

 into action. Soft food will not do this, consequently 

 more or less drj^ food must be supplied. In the gizzard 

 with the aid of some grit, the woody fiber enveloping 

 the most nutritious parts of seeds and grain is ground 

 into atoms, also the nutritious parts thus prepared for 

 digestion and assimilation. Some gritty substance is 

 a))solutely essential; for, without it, the gizzard cannot 



