METHODS OF FEEDING 287 



hours after the chick has dried in the incubator is soon 

 enough to begin feeding it, and it is safer not to feed it until 

 it is seventy- two hours old than to feed it when it is only 

 twenty-four hours from the shell. It is important that 

 artificially hatched chicks should be transferred from 

 hatcher to brooder in the evening, after dusk, so that they 

 will stay under the hover. After they have nestled under 

 the warm hover for a night they learn the purpose of it, 

 and will instinctively return to it at all hours when they 

 require warmth. 



There are almost as many good methods of feeding chicks 

 as there are good poultr)anen, so that it is only necessary 

 to give the following simple f and typical method which 

 exemplifies the principles involved. 



The first feed consists of a mixture composed of eggs 

 which have been boiled hard and thoroughly ground, 

 shells and all, with bran and pinhead oatmeal. The pro- 

 portion of eggs to bran and meal should be such that when 

 rubbed together the moisture of the egg will be taken up by 

 the other ingredients. When feeding' is commenced forty 

 to forty-eight hours after hatching, the chicks should have 

 only as much of this mixture as they will eat up quickly 

 and greedily in ten minutes, five times daily. Care should 

 be taken to see that each chick is taught to eat. It is very 

 essential that the chicks have plenty of grit and water for 

 the first few days. It is also well to mix a small amount 

 of charcoal with the egg and bran. After the first or second 

 day, when it is apparent that all of the chicks have learned 

 to eat, a grain chick feed should be given them at two of 

 the feeding periods the first day, and the egg mixture 

 diminished, until at the end of the first week they are re- 

 ceiving only one feeding of the egg mixture, daily at noon. 



