FEEDING YOUNG CHICKENS 



Poultry Men and Women of Experience Give Their Methods — Valuable Advice to be Renum- 

 bered — Common Errors to be Avoided — "A Stitch in Time." 



(Not all successful poultrymen feed alike. Various methods of feeding young chickens may be adopted, yet all may have beneficial 

 results; circumstances and environments differ, and may demand different treatment and rations; dangers of ill health that beset chick- 

 ens in one state may be comparatively unknown In another; and the successful poultryman is he whose observation instructs him upon 

 particular necessities of this location Editor.) 



MSUet a Favorite Food — No Corumeal Mush — Give Fresh 

 Water and Let Them Hustle. 



Feeding the chicks is one of the greatest problems the 

 poultry fancier has to meet. When chicks are hatched with 

 a hen I give them no food for thirty-six to forty-eight hours. 

 In the incubator, when the hatch is very large and they are 

 crowding each other at the window, I take thein out as soon 

 as they are apparently strong and place them in a brooder, 

 giving them nothing for the first twenty-four hours but 

 coarse river sand and fine Mica Crystal grit. The next 

 twenty-four hours I give them water and dry food in the 

 shape of millet seed, pin head oats, fine cracked corn and 

 stale dry bread crumbs. My experience has been, however, 

 that the little ones do better on millet seed alone for the 

 first weeK or ten days then on any combination I have ever 

 -given them, but they do fairly well on any of the above 

 rations. 



I think more chicks are killed by the old-fashioned 

 method of mixing up cornmeal and giving them all they can 

 eat, than from any other cause. This brings on fermenta- 

 tion in the crop, followed, by bowel trouble, and when this 

 appears there is very little to be done for the affected chicks, 

 and they usually drop off within a few days. 



I never feed my chickens, from the time they are 

 hatched up to laying time the next year, any mashes what- 

 ever, and I question very much whether mashes are ever 

 beneficial. 



After the chicks are old .enough to leave the brooder 

 they are continued on one of the above (or all of them 

 are given at various times), and in the summer I keep the 

 troughs (under shelter and arranged so that chickens can- 

 not get into them), well supplied with oats, cracked' corn, 

 wheat, millet and grit. Let me again call the fancier's at- 

 tention to millet. This one article alone, which can be 

 cheaply purchased, is the most valuable of all our foods for 

 the little chicks, and I might say for the older ones also. It 

 makes the best scratching food that I know of and chickens 

 are so fond of it that they will work in their scratching 

 pens from morning till night to hunt out the little grains. 



The -drinking vesels should be at all times kept clean 

 and filled with fresh water, the oftener the. better. I have 

 solved the question on my own place for the older chickens 

 by a system of springs, as I call them. I have a system of 

 water pipes running through the yards and outside runs, 

 and by making a little leakage in one of these joints, cut- 

 ting out a little hole as the pipe is laid underneath the 

 ground, and fixing a basin to hold the water, I have cool, 

 fresh water at all times. I cover this little spring with a 

 box or shade of some sort, then surround the spring with 

 something or other so as to allow the chickens to reach in 

 and drink, but not get into the water. 



By carefully looking after these details one should be 

 able to raise from ninety to ninety-five per cent of all the 



chickens that are hatched and that live to be three days 

 old. There will be a small percentage of each hatch that 

 are strong enough to get out of the shell but have not 

 enough vitality to survive the first three days. Where I 

 use hens for mothers I never allow the hen to run with the 

 litle ones, but kee^ her con'fined, allowing the chicks to 

 roam where they please after the dew is off. In this way 

 each little one learns independence, and many times I find 

 them far away from the mother hustling for themselves; 

 while if the mother were allowed to go out with them they 

 would defend on her to forage for them. Should a rain 

 storm come up, each will hustle back -to its mother, while 

 if the mother were out with the brood confusion would 

 result. 



E. A. KEGLBY, Iowa. 

 Ex-president of the American Poultry Asociation. 



A Variety of Food--Overfeeding Disastrous — Confine the 

 Old Hens — No More G-reased Heads. 



I have ho fixed rule for feeding young chicks, but ex- 

 perience (the best of teachers) has given me better results 

 than any set of methods I have ever tried. My chicks are 

 not fed until about twenty-four hours old, when they are 

 given oatmeal, dry. This is their only ration until they 

 are one week old, when some millet seed is fed. Oatmeal 

 and millet are fed alternately until the chicks are about 

 three weeks old, when I feed a little wheat, also cane seed. 

 About this time the oatmeal is gradually dropped and mil- 

 let, wheat and cane seed form their principal ration. Oc- 

 casionally they get a feed of bread crumbs or cornbread. 

 When they are one month to six wrecks old I feed cracked 

 corn or any grain they seem to like. Up to this time they 

 are fed five times a day and are fed sparingly. I want 

 them to eat everything up clean— in fact, they" do better if 

 kept just a little hungry to induce exercise. Especially is 

 this true of chicks half grown. In my opinion the. greatest 

 bane to poultry raisers is overfeeding. At no time do I 

 feed soft lood to chicks. 



When hens are used for brooding there are confined until 

 the chicks are a month to six weeks old, and after that even 

 during damp or cold weather. When the hens are permitted 

 to range they neglect to hover the chicks properly, but if 

 closely confined the chicks will thrive during zero, weather 

 if they can slip under the mother hen for warmth when 

 necessary. When chicks are this old, if the weather is fine 

 the hen and her brood are turned out and sometimes they 

 are fed both morning and evening. If they are taught to 

 range a quarter of a mile from home so much the better. 



I had an experience last year that is worth relating. 

 In April I noticed lice on some of my chicks and greased 

 one hundred and thirty. In two weeks from that time there 

 were less than twenty of them alive. I had greased chicks 

 many times before, but never with results like this. Their 



