ARTIFICIAL INCUBATING AND BROODING 



the brooder must be cleaned oftener to keep it sweet smelling. 



The first day they have no water, then it is given to them 

 (a little warm) three or four times a day after they have eaten 

 and is taken away again in half an hour or so. Believing that 

 an ounce of prevention is indeed worth a pound of cure, I give, 

 three or four times the first week or ten days, scalded fresh milk 

 instead of water the first time in the day. By so doing I believe 

 most of the bowel trouble will be prevented, and possibly all 

 of it. As to the heat, I keep it so that few of them seek the hover; 

 but I seldom, except on very windy days, shut the lid down 

 tight. I put a small nail or a thin chip under, and so avoid the 

 danger of overheating, by giving a means of escape for the hot 

 air. The burlap on the floor of the brooder need be renewed 

 only once in three weeks, usually. But that must be governed 

 by the soil that is on it. 



I like to get my chicks out on the ground by the time they 

 are a week old, but sometimes, early in the season when the 

 ' weather is bad, they have been in the brooder till three weeks 

 old before ever getting onto the ground, and yet there was not 

 a case of leg weakness. Perhaps the strictly grain diet which is 

 furnished by the feed I use is responsible in part for this, but the 

 thick covering of chaff on the floor of the brooder, in which 

 their food is buried, is also a great factor in the case. 



As to incubators, I think they are a good deal like children, 

 all the better for a judicious letting alone. If one notices all 

 the little naughty things a child does, one is pretty apt to be 

 kept in hot water. If you notice all the little variations of 

 temperature in an incubator, you will be kept in a state of anxiety 

 and doubt aU the time, but by letting it alone except at stated 

 periods, say three times a day, you can judge much better how 

 the regulator is working. The inequalities of heat will adjust 

 themselves, and at certain hours you get the mean temperature. 



NOTES ON DRY FEEDING 



"WHAT AND HOW TO FEED TO PRODUCE 

 TWO-POUND CHICKS AT EIGHT WEEKS 



DR. H. P. NOTTAGE 



Dr. Nottage is a practical poultry keeper and has for a number 

 oj years practiced, and been an exponent of, dry feeding both chicks 

 andfoivls. His conclusions, therefore, can be considered as the out- 

 come of experience and intelligent obsernjation. — Editor. 



I ASKED a well-known authority on poultry a while ago 

 what he had found out to be the disadvantages of dry 

 feeding and he responded, "I haven't found any yet!" 

 If such is the experience of a man who for many years has been 

 constantly visiting poultry ranchfe, it certainly may be a safe 

 proposition for any one to consider, even though he has a large 

 ranch, and may be afraid of losing money by changing methods. 

 I have always contended that the safest way, at least for the 

 beginner is to start with his little chicks direct from the machine, 

 for there have been some who for various reasons, most of them 

 avoidable, have got into trouble by changing horses in the middle 

 of the stream. It seems as if some flocks of fowls have never 

 had sufficient meat in their ration. Those hens may fill up on 

 beef scraps to their hurt if the scraps are placed before them 

 once, allowed to remain and they are at liberty to eat their fill. 

 It is better in such cases to let them have access to the meat 

 only every other day at first, or to see that the hopper feeds 

 gradually, so that they have to work for what they get. 



Another thing for which I have contended from the first 

 is that httle chicks right from the machine shall be allowed 

 access to scraps at their first meal and ever after have all they 



want. I have repeatedly seen warnings not to give them scraps 

 until a week or two. I give mine all they want and bowel 

 trouble is a thing unknown among my chicks. Here comes in 

 the question of the kind of scraps one uses; and there may be 

 the difficulty with some. Some grades of scraps are only fit 

 for fertilizer. Every maker seems to turn out scraps different 

 from another. We get them dry and fine; coarse and full of 

 chunks of bone in big splinters; bright and lively looking, and 

 dead and dull in appearance. I hope that as soon as poultry- 

 men know and say what they want we shall get scraps uniform 

 in consistency and quality. For dry feeding we need scraps 

 that average one-eighth of an inch in size, bright looking, of a 

 golden brown, in which the fibers of meat and small bits of bone 

 appear, without the feathery and dusty appearance produced 

 by an admixture of tankage. Let us stand for at least fifty 

 per cent of protein. Before I knew much about scraps I fed 

 a brand that was full of big spUnters of bone that government 

 analysis afterward proved to contain only thirty-five per cent 

 protein. Tankage in scraps is detected by feathery strings of 

 stuff that look as if httle shreds of cotton batting had been 

 rubbed in animal meal. Cottonseed Culls are sometimes used 

 as an adulterant and give a similar appearance to the scrap. 



We would not like to feed cracked com that was half meal, 

 as that would be considered as wasteful; neither do we want to 

 feed scraps that are half meal. Let the meal be sifted out and 

 sold as animal meal and give us scraps that are granular, so 

 that we can detect just what each particle really is. 



One of the questions that is most frequently asked is, 

 "Can you grow chicks just as rapidly on dry food as you can 

 with wet food?" With the breeds that are grown for broilers 

 it is expected that you will get the most of your chicks to weigh 

 three pounds to the pair, live weight at eight weeks and that 

 some of them wiU weigh two pounds each. This is accomplished 

 by feeding four or five times a day cooked food that is concen- 

 trated and forcing, using the formulas that experienced broiler 

 raisers have found to be best suited to this purpose and even 

 then it is expected that some of the chicks will ''go off their 

 legs" from over-feeding. You can produce the same weight of 

 chicken by filling up a food box with one-third wheat and two- 

 thirds cracked com and let them have all the scraps they will 

 eat, and you will not see as many get weak in the legs from over- 

 feeding. 



Speaking of the legs of your chicks, I would like to make 

 an observation that has been made by visitors to my ranch. 

 They have remarked the large sturdy legs that little chicks put 

 on under this dry feeding as if to carry a large frame later on. 

 It would be interesting to know if others have observed the same 

 thing. One man who has used dry feeding off and on for twenty- 

 five years wrote that during the years that he used dry feeding 

 the fowls were larger, and that when he dropped back to the 

 usual wet mash feeding he noticed a deterioration in size of both. 

 Without making any attempt to breed for size of eggs, I know 

 that my eggs have increased from about 22J ounces to the dozen 

 to about 28 ounces. 



These are points for all to observe. Experiment stations 

 are already working on these problems and we may expect in 

 the next few years to learn some valuable things. 



It requires a good deal of courage for one who has been 

 accustomed to the old way of feeding to place a lot of food 

 before chicks and let them have all they want; but thousands 

 of poultrymen are now doing this with the best of results, both 

 in growth, health of young chicks and breeding stock. Now 

 is the time to plan for testing this method with your young 

 chicks that will soon be coming on. Try a hatch or two with 

 dry food and you will find that it not only saves time, but you 

 will have fewer chicks that are sick, and a smaller percentage 

 of mortality. 



62 



