ARTIFICIAL INCUBATION I79 



FEEDING INCUBATOR CHICKS 



It is not SO much what the food is as how the 

 food is supplied, providing there are plenty of starchy,, 

 albuminous and green matters, are the conclusions 

 reached by Dr. Cooper Curtice of the Rhode Island 

 experiment station in raising incubator chicks. In 

 the fourteenth annual report of this station he says, 

 that in nature small seeds, insects and grass furnish 

 food for chicks. These are abundant in the spring 

 and summer months and it is at this time that the 

 chicks thrive. To secure the best results foods simu- 

 lating both the composition and mechanical character 

 of these should be supplied. For green stuff to be 

 easily assimilable, some plant should be supplied which 

 may also be easily broken. We have found hanging a 

 head of lettuce in the brooder by a string to exactly 

 furnish the desired want and be greedily, even crazily, 

 eaten by the chickens. Millet seeds, broken rice, rolled, 

 oats and other things of this character were greedily 

 eaten and well digested. 



For meat for the youngest chickens, we have 

 given the sterile eggs boiled hard and ground through 

 a sausage machine. While it is preferable, if one has- 

 time, to chop the egg fine and m.ix it with bran, or even, 

 feed it a little at a time to the chickens, we found it 

 satisfactory to mix it with the bran until it was 

 crumbly and feed it in bulk ; a sufficient quantity being- 

 given for the number of chickens in the brooder. 

 Mixing the eggs with cracker did not succeed with us 

 as well for very young chicks, although it is fed by 

 others apparently without harm. As the chickens 

 grew older meat scraps were substituted. These were 

 usually sifted, added to the grain ration, and strewn 

 upon the floor of the brooder. Bpiled liver and animal 

 meal was also used, but there was very little difference 



