78 



SUCCESS WITH POULTRY 



time or allow them to crowd; for if you do bowel trouble 

 will be the result which will take off a large per cent in a 

 short time. Too much heat will weaken them and cause 

 many to die, so you must be very careful, especially at night, 

 about obtaining the right temperature, as it often grows 

 vfiry cool the latter part of the night, so a little extra flame 

 should be left on in cool nights. 



I use runs flve feet wide, ten feet long inside of house, 

 and outside runs fifty feet long well shaded ip summer. 



The ne;xt and most important of all is feed. I wish to 

 say right here that overfeeding for the, first four weeks of a 

 chick's life has put more people out of the business than all 

 other things combined. You can hardly feed too little. We 

 feed four times a day for the first five weeks. The first 

 three weeks we use principally dry feed and make them 

 scratch for every meal but that given at night. We feed 

 Spratt'a Patent Chick Feed morning and night. At ten and 

 two o'clock we feed millet ieed, pinhead oatmeal and crack- 

 ed wheat. We keep them well beddedwith cut clover two 

 to three inches deep, and throw all their feed in this. They 

 also eat much of the clover. We feed very sparingly at 

 first. Keep them hungry - at all times. Much depends on 

 keeping them at work; it assists in keeping them in good 

 health. W^ keep grit and charcoal before them all the 

 time, and fresh water is always before them. Care must 

 be taken to keep their drinking dishes free from slime; they 

 should be washed daily. Clean your broder every other 

 day if you bed with cut hay, and every day if you use sand 

 or bran. 



After three weeks your chicks will begin to tire of this 

 feed, then we give two meals a day of soft food composed 

 of one part stale bread soaked in water, or better, milk, one 

 part bran, one part hominy meal, ten per cent Spratt's 

 Ground Meat., H. O. Poultry Pood with ten per cent good 

 beef scraps is a grand growing food and much easier pre- 

 pared, but more expensive. We continue Spratt's Chick 

 Feed once a day for two weeks longer, giving mash morn- 

 ing and night, using cracked corn and wheat once a day. 

 If running for broilers make your mash one-half corn meal. 

 We run but fifty to sixty chicks in one lot, as this is 

 enough for any single brooder if you want them to live. 



After they are old enough to leave the brooder and you 

 cannot give free range make yards twenty feet wide by one 

 hundred feet long and put sixty to seventy-five in a flocfc 

 on grass yards- with plenty of shade, dividing the pullets 

 from the cockerels. Keep them free from lice and you will 

 have birds of fine quality for breeders. 



EDGAE BEIGGS, New York. 



Principally a Question of Moisture. 



"I can hatch the, chicks easily enough, but to raise 

 them is the question." This expression is very frequently 

 heard from those raising poultry by artificial methods. 



I have done a great deal of experimenting along this 



lin^ during the past eight years. Some seven years agp I 

 thought I struck the right idea for brooding young chicks 

 when first hatched. I had three separate houses, 7x12. I 

 built flues for each of these houses and put indoor brooders 

 in them, also a small stove. Now, for the results. The 

 chicks did flne for about a week and I thought now I am on 

 the road to success, but, lo! I went to feed them one morn- 

 ing an^ a number of them looked like big toads swollen to 

 nearly double size. I removed the stoves and the trouble 

 stopped. I then worked along a few years with indoor brood- 

 ers and cool, dry houses with varied success. In 1899 I com- 

 menced with outdoor brooders. This. season I have used nine 

 of them, raising some broods nearly to a chicken, while 

 losing some broods almost entirely — all losses except a. few 

 with the universal disease, bowel trou"ble. Those brooded 

 with hens occasionally died in same proportion. I concluded 

 from observation that it was moisture and not the feed that 

 caused the trouble, as I noticed if the weather was dry 

 whether the temperature was high or low I raised about 

 all the chicks, and also if I got them by the first ten days 

 without bowel trouble they were all right. To satisfy my- 

 self that it was moisture the first week or ten days that 

 gives them bowel trouble I put several hens with chicks 

 up in a loft for a week. It was perfectly dry in this loft 

 and I never lost a strong chick after this experiment. 

 From this experience I shall construct a room in the loft 

 of some of my buildings next seasoii with plenty of light 

 and ventilation without fire except in the brooder and 

 keep all incubator chicks up above the ground for the 

 first ten days. 



A god many perusing this article will say, ' ' He has 

 not said a word about feed."' I don't expect to say much 

 about feed as it is immaterial what you feed if you solve 

 the moisture problem. I can raise every chick hatched, as 

 I have done il, on the same feed I feed old fowls when there 

 is no moisture to contend with. Give the chicks plenty of 

 grit and clean water, a little green food and you can 

 safely feed them any feed you may have, if you keep 

 them free from moisture the first two weeks of their lives. 



As to spaee required for brooder chicks, of course the 

 more the better. With my outdoor brooder chicks I use 

 three boards making a triangular yard, the sharp angle com- 

 ing up to the brooder, using two sixteen Etnd one twelve- 

 foot boards one food wide. I keep them in this yard with 

 plenty of chaff to scratch in until they get large enough to 

 fly over the board. Then I cut small openings in the boards 

 for them to go out and in at will. If you have limited 

 spaee this yard will accommodate probably forty until near 

 frying size if you are careful about sanitary conditions. I 

 am enabled to put forty to sixty in brooders three feet 

 square, and keep them in these at night until frying size is 

 reached. I then cull and run them in a movable brood house 

 until four or five months old, gradually moving the brood 

 house nearer to permanent "house, and finally moving brood- 

 house away. O. E. SKINNER, Kansas. 



RULES FOR RAISING CHICKS IN BROODERS 



BY P. H. JACOBS. 



1. If the chicks do not come out of the eggs until the 

 22nd day, or longer, it indicates that the temperature of the 

 egg drawer was too low or eggs too old. They should be- 

 gin to pip on the 20th day. 



2. If they begin to come out on the 18th day it indi- 



3. If chicks come out weak it indicates either too high 



cates that the average temperature was too high, 

 or too low a temperature, or that the eggs were from im- 

 mature pullets or over-fat hens. 



4. Give no food for thirty-six hours after the chicks 

 are hatched. 



5. They should then be fed every two hours until one 



